


Ezekiel 25:17

by WhyAreAllThePenNamesTaken



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Organized Crime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-05-15
Packaged: 2019-03-26 05:27:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 26,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13851060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhyAreAllThePenNamesTaken/pseuds/WhyAreAllThePenNamesTaken
Summary: The Starks lay their vengence on the Lannisters and the Kings Land City Watch Homicide Unit is left to pick up the pieces.





	1. Crime Scene

Detective Chief Inspector Selmy showed his warrant card to the watchman on the perimeter and was met by Detective Watchman Hunt near the front gate of the expensive Rosby property that was now the site of what would probably be the biggest investigation of his career.

"Details, Hunt."

"Sir we've got four dead bodies. Three guards, one in the car on the street, one on the front porch and one inside, all killed by single gunshot wounds to the head. No casings so far, but the guy on the porch was killed with a rifle so we could get something when we find the nest."

"Bullets?"

"Might get something from the guard in the car, but the porch round is misshapen by multiple impacts, unsuitable for comparison."

"What about the fourth man?"

"Tywin Lannister." Barristan turned to Hunt in shock. Tywin had been the head of the city's underworld for the past two years, a crown won when Tywin's men riddled a local restaurant with bullets. A restaurant that was hosting a wedding reception that his main rival Eddard Stark had been attending, killing him, several of his men and crippling his son in the process. The case the drugs squad put together to bring down the rest of Stark's gang, including his son and brother in law, had just been an afterthought. Not that anyone had been able to prove anything. "He died a bit harder."

The two men walked through the richly appointed house and out into the backyard. There were more forensic techs taking pictures, this time of a blackened corpse lying amidst the ruins of what had probably been an expensive wooden chair on the stone patio.

"They set him on fire," commented Barristan.

"And shot him six times." The two men turned to see Detective Sergeant Tarth, all six feet, three inches of her, standing on the patio.

"How do you know it was six?" Hunt asked.

"Police work, Detective." She beckoned and they followed. "Tywin had security cameras on all the external areas, including the back yard." She led them upstairs past the third bodyguard, who had been killed as he ran down the stairs, and into a small room with a half dozen screens. Brienne tapped a few keys and the screens reset. The one on the top right and top centre showed the street in front, while the top left showed the front porch. The back patio was shown on the bottom centre screen.

A KLCW patrol car pulled up behind the parked car. The man who got out was in uniform but it was impossible to see any identifying marks and he was wearing what appeared to be a balaclava. He tapped on the window and when it was rolled down the man pulled out a suppressed pistol and fired a single shot into the car. At exactly the same time, the guard on the front porch stiffened and fell to the ground. The faux-Watchman went back to his car and pulled out a battering ram. A car pulled up to the gate and three men got out, all wearing balaclavas and with their bodies securely insulated against the King's Landing winter's night. They walked up to the front door and two of the men used the battering ram to smash it open. A few minutes later, the men reappeared, this time dragging a half-naked Tywin, an expensive looking wooden chair, and a can of petrol.

Tywin was tied to the chair and appeared to make some cutting remark right before one of the men put duct tape over his mouth and another upended the tank of petrol over his head. The fourth man, shorter and slighter than the rest and who hadn't done any physical labour so far, pulled a lighter from his pocket, lit it and tossed it at Tywin, who immediately burst into flame. He struggled, a sight made all the more horrible by the absence of sound, but Barristan forced himself to look. Then the leader pulled out a pistol and fired some shots – six in fact – into Tywin, who went almost instantly still. The group waited a moment and then they left, walking out the front door.

Brienne manipulated the controls and the top left screen reversed slightly. As Tywin was being burned out the back a woman was running out the front, dressed in a short skirt and clutching a jacket and shoes. She headed down the street and didn't look back.

"Who's that?"

"As far as we know Tywin didn't have a steady girlfriend, but we'll ask around."

"We should check with Vice." Hunt offered. Brienne and Selmy regarded him. "I mean, the way she's dressed, no purse, in a place like this, with a guy like him, they'd probably know who she was.

Barristan couldn't argue with that. "There are bigger problems too; this is going to create a vacuum, which a dozen players are going to attempt to fill. King's Landing was going to bathe in blood no matter what we do."

"Not to mention that Tywin's own people are going to be out for blood, the man had a lot of friends" pointed out Hunt. He didn't add what the three of them were thinking, that those friends were on both sides of the law, and a lot of pockets were going to be getting lighter in the months to come.

"Lot of good those friends did him," stated Brienne, matter of factly.

_There's something in that. What it is I don't know._

“Detective Chief Inspector, sir.” The three men looked up to see a young Watchman – Payne by his name tag – Selmy wondered if he was any relation to Sir Illyn Payne, Tywin's pet Judge.

"Yes"

"DCI Slynt is here to see you." The way the boy said the name of the head of the Narcotics unit told him that, related or not, the boy wasn't part of the network of dirty Watchmen Tywin had kept on his payroll.

"Did he say what he wanted?"

"To offer his assistance to the investigation."

Hunt looked at Brienne. "Many hands do make light work."

Barristan didn't trust Slynt as far as he could throw him, but he couldn't piss him off either, the man had powerful friends, even with everything in flux. "Let's all play nice for now."

Slynt was waiting on the back patio. "They set him on fire."

"And shot him six times," piped in Hunt.

"Does the drug squad know who Tywin's enemies were?" Brienne asked.

"The Essosi maybe, though I never heard anything about disagreements." _And you would know,_ thought Barristan. "Maybe the Martells, but after twenty-five years…"

"The Starks?"

"One's dead, one's in prison, one's a cripple, one's a psychopath going around slaughtering low level dealers and leaving spray painted wolves as calling cards, and one's sixteen."

"And Sansa?"

Slynt and his men started laughing, Detective Inspector Deem was holding his sides while Slynt was bent nearly double. "She doesn't have it in her."

"You just ruled out all the other suspects."

"There could be someone we don't know about. Besides the girl’s supposed to be up in the Gulltown or something."

"It wouldn't even be the first time today something we believed to be true wasn't."

"What do you mean?"

In reply, Brienne indicated the mortal remains of the most powerful man in the city. "He's supposed to be untouchable."

Before Slynt could contort Brienne's words into a slight on his non-existent honour, Barristan decided to turn the conversation in a more neutral direction.

"What about one of Tywin's captains?"

"After the unpleasantness with the Reynes, I rather doubt it."

"That was thirty years ago," pointed out Hunt.

"What about rivals?" asked Brienne.

"Tywin didn't have rivals, not anymore." _Gods the man has drunk the kool-aid, he probably couldn't put together a decent investigation that wasn't fixed and by all accounts his men couldn't follow a child to school without being made and labelled perverts. Tywin had at least one rival, who had just set him on fire. And shot him six times._

"Alright, let's just pull in all the major drug dealers in the city, work over the informants and see if we can't find a suspect. Who knows, forensics might even give us something."


	2. Celebrating

Meanwhile, down near the docks, in a pub called the Smoking Log, the Starks was celebrating. Sansa and Bran were seated in a corner booth and more than a dozen members were celebrating the fall of the House of Lannister. The death of Tywin hadn't been the only victory that night.

Around midnight, Arya had slipped a vial full of some chemical, supplied by Oberyn Martell, into Gregor Clegane's drink and walked away.

An hour before Tywin died, some of the guys had grabbed Roose Bolton and Walder Frey as they drove home, killed their guards, made them put on life jackets, shot them and thrown them into Blackwater Bay; they'd probably be found by midday. Roose didn't have any children – not since Robb had killed Ramsey for beating Sansa's friend Jeyne Poole. Walder, on the other hand, had many children by many different women, and he was the only thing holding them together. Even before the old man had been offed they had started quietly taking each other out. With any luck, Walder's death would set off an all-out war between the different branches of the family. It was no less than the treacherous bastards deserved.

Moments after Tywin had burned, a four-man team had broken into the Lannister main stash, stealing nearly two hundred kilos of smack and coke, then repeated the heist at the Bolton and Frey main stashes. One of the men had received a flesh wound to his upper arm, but he’d already been seen to and would be fine.

All in all, nineteen people had been killed, Tywin, his three guards, Clegane, Bolton and his driver, Frey and his guards, and nine guards at the three stash houses. It was probably the most violent night in the last two decades. Which was going to be a problem, but doing it slow and giving those who had lived through the first night a chance to go underground and tool up wasn't an option. The people in this room, plus a couple of people who were even now vialling up the take from the stash houses, were all they had. For now.

Sansa looked around the room, relieved that despite the general revelry there were several armed men at the doors, who seemed to be drinking nothing stronger than lemonade. Brynden Tully wouldn't let the guards drink coke; he said it made it too easy to hide alcohol. Sansa had asked him how he was supposed to stop his men drinking something clear. Her great-uncle had replied that real men didn't drink clear liquor.

Apparently, the men taking tequila shots with Arya at the bar weren't real men. Which probably explained why they were half-conscious. Arya had shown up at the house where Sansa was staying not long after Sansa had returned to Kings Landing. Their father had once described them as "as different as the sun and moon", but Sansa and Arya both liked to watch the shoebox apartment their mother had moved into once the City had confiscated Ned Stark's assets. Neither had actually gone in, Sansa because she wanted to conceal the fact that she was back in town and Arya because Tywin had put a five-figure price on her head, as retribution for the fact that Arya liked killing Lannisters. When you thought about it, the sisters weren't all that different.

For some reason, Sansa's thoughts turned to Shae. The woman was prickly, no doubt, but she was in it for herself, which had made it easy to get her to help take down Tywin Lannister. A hundred thousand dollars and a new name was a small price to pay. It was also a threat that Tywin hadn't seen coming, the look on his face when Brynden told Shae to leave, by name, had made that clear. Now she was gone, in a car bound for Lannisport and, hopefully, a better life than she'd had thus far.

All the other evidence from the night before was gone too, the clothes burned, the weapons dumped in the Blackwater along with the KLCW cruiser, the stolen car the crew had used to get to Tywin's house, and the burner phones that Sansa and Shae had used to communicate. Provided no one talked, even Tywin's cameras couldn't be used to convict them. There would be heat, with so many bodies that was inevitable. The important thing now was to move fast and make sure there were no more bodies than there had to be.

Sansa got up, signalling to the others that it was time to get down to business. Brynden, Larence and Jeyne Stark got up and headed for the manager’s office/poker room at the back of the bar, dropping their phones on the bar, where Kyra quickly collected them and dropped them into a small box beneath the bar.

Sansa moved to grab the handlebars on Bran's wheelchair, but he spoke before she could actually make contact, "don't even think about it." Sansa looked at Meera, who simply rolled her eyes. Bran led the way through the crowd. And even though he wouldn't let her push him, Bran did consent to letting Sansa pass his cell phone, together with her own, to Kyra before they headed towards a store room in the back of the bar.

The Watch and the media had given her father’s enterprise a number of names: the mob, the gang, the more charitable ones called it the Stark Organisation. To its members it had always been referred to as the Company.

When the quartet entered the room, Brynden immediately picked up a detector wand like the ones at the airports and ran it over Sansa and Bran, who couldn't resist commenting. "Sometimes I think you're too paranoid."

"The Whisperers have bugs the size of your pinky nail now."

"Yeah, the Whisperers. The cops on the other hand count themselves lucky to be using tape recorders."

"Paranoia preserves, boy."

Before the Company’s chief enforcer and moneyman started actually fighting, Sansa cut in. "Boys we have work to do, you can measure them later." The two men nodded.

The five gathered around the poker table.

"Brynden, how’s our man?”

“Just got a call from the doc, no major vessels were hit and they’ve sealed up the wound, barring infection, he’ll be fine.”

“Glad to hear it. Is his DNA in the system?”

“No, and he’s going to lie low until he’s all fixed up.”

Good, you might as well start talking to the street dealers this afternoon."

"Will do."

"What do you think the other Lannisters will do?"

“Like we discussed, Kevan might be able to pull it together quickly, he was basically his brother's number two, but the kids, Tywin kept them away from the business."

"He never thought anyone but himself could do his job." Put in Jeyne. Her family, the Westerlings, had work for Tywin for a long time and had made their peace with him after Jeyne and Robb had run off together. She knew at least some of how Tywin thought.

"They could still do some damage." Sansa and Brynden would both have preferred to make a clean sweep, but there simply weren't enough Stark men to do that and they'd chosen to prioritise secrecy over completeness.

"I'll have some of the lads keep an eye on them. But we've brought ourselves some time at least."

"That we did. Larence, when can we expect our new product to come online?"

"This lot will be vialled up in a few days. The corner kids won't run out 'til then and it'll give them plenty of time to sell out what they have in stock."

"Multiple stash houses?"

"No, the house I’ve brought is big enough that I’ve set up a strong room, most of the gear will be kept in there and I’ll have the only key.

Sansa nodded approvingly. "Bran, do you have a counting room organised?"

"There's a house just off the north highway that's already set up, but I want to have the street dealers meet collectors at different points rather than take them to that room. I also have some storage units set up, so once it's counted I can take them there, split it up so the cops can't get it all in one go."

"Sounds like a good plan." It was good to know those two had had those things in hand, Sansa had basically passed those jobs off to them while she focused on Tywin. She turned to Brynden. "Can we arrange that?"

"Shouldn't be a problem, we can do pick up and drop off at the same time or separately."

Sansa nodded. "For you Jeyne, I have a gift." Sansa walked over to the desk, and pulled out several folders, putting most of them down on the desk and taking one back to the table and passing it to Jeyne. "A way to bring your husband home."

Jeyne opened the folder, saw what was inside and smiled. "Thank you." Sansa just nodded.

"Well, we shouldn't sit here all day, we have something to celebrate after all." The five of them stood and walked back out into the main bar.

It was done, Sansa had cast the die. This morning they could celebrate, but after that there was still much to be done.


	3. When It's Not Your Day

Forensics did not in fact give them anything, the bullet had gone through the head of the guard in the car – whose name was Addam Marband – and pancaked on the frame of the passenger seat. The shoes the murderers wore were all off the shelf and had no distinctive wear patterns. No prints or shell casings were recovered. Though there was some gunshot residue on a window of the house opposite Tywin's, but the family was away on holiday and had been for a week.  The KLCW cruiser hadn't been found yet, but it had been driven off an open parking lot in Stokeworth about a quarter hour before the murders.

Hyle put down the phone. "Vice has a name for our lady of negotiable virtue, Shae, no last name. She works from a brothel called the Silky Night but she mostly does house calls."

"Get down there; get an address or a phone number." Hunt put on his jacket and headed out the door.

Slynt walked by holding a cup of what smelled like tea. When Barristan gave him a look, Slynt shrugged. "I'm going to get some rack time, then we'll go out and pick up any crew chief we can find." He turned to go, stopped as if remembering something, and turned back. "Two things. First, Roose Bolton and Walder Frey weren’t at their homes when my people went to check on them.” _Protecting the goose that lays the golden eggs, were you Slynt?_ “Second, Gregor Clegane had a heart attack around midnight."

"He's dead?"

"Yeah."

"Hell of a coincidence"

"Clegane's a big guy."

"He's no older than forty and it's not like he ate fast food every day."

Slynt peered at Selmy for a long moment. "You're thinking someone poisoned him?"

"Oberyn Martell isn't called the Red Viper for nothing. And Clegane is supposed to have had something to do with his sister's death."

Slynt didn't seem to have a reply for that. "I'll ask around." He turned to go.

"Janos. I get that you feel you have to make an example of the pricks responsible for this, but I'd like to be able to put this one down as well."

"And how do we do that?"

Barristan couldn't help but hate himself, but he knew how the game was played. "Death of a known suspect."

Slynt considered that for a moment. "I'll let you know what I find." He headed off down towards the lifts.

Barristan looked at the pictures four shooters on the whiteboard. Whoever had done this wasn't wholly cold blooded, they'd set the man on fire, for the love of the gods. And shot him six times. But they were also smart enough to leave no meaningful evidence, despite the sloppiness of the left behind recordings. Unless that wasn't a mistake. There was a fair chance that tape would be leaked to the news outlets by tonight. Either way, the violent manner of Tywin's death sent a powerful message: _I can go to this powerful man's house and make him die screaming, imagine what I can do to you._ Then Tywin Lannister's mad dog had died of a heart attack the very night his boss had met a most grisly end. Hell of coincidence. The words of his own mentor, Arthur Dayne, came back to him. “Never assume it's a coincidence.”

DS Loras Tyrell and DW Emmon Cuy walked into the bullpen.

"Morning boss." It occurred to Barristan that the two men shouldn't have been out of the office. They weren't up, that privilege belonged to Crane and Morrigen.

"What are you two doing out?" So what if lack of sleep had left him light on social graces, he'd never really held with that emotional stuff Education and Training was currently trying to foist upon the City Watch.

"Triple in Stokeworth," said Cuy.

"Give me the rundown." Barristan was head of the Homicide Unit, it was his job to keep on top of these things.

"Dead were all known members of the Bolton gang. Armed. Cause and manner of death was gunshot wounds to the torso, shotguns to be precise. House was not known to be used by the Boltons, but we found baby powder, bowls, all that shit."

"The main stash?"

"Yeah, Crane and Morrigen caught another triple in Southside, up near the Kingswood." Loras informed him.

"That's Frey territory".

"Indeed, and I heard there was another triple at Blackton, Caron and Oakheart caught that one."

"The Lannister main stash, we can assume. The Stranger was busy tonight."

"Barristan." Penny, his secretary, spoke up. "I have the Commander on the phone, line two."

Barristan went over to his office and picked up the phone. "Sir."

"Why the fuck am I being pulled out of bed at four o'clock in the morning over some fucking massacre, and more importantly, why the fuck am I not getting this call from the head of my fucking homicide unit, but instead from the fucking Mayor?"

"Sir, I felt that there was nothing I couldn't tell you at three o'clock that couldn't wait until seven thirty."

"But you thought it right to inform the Mayor?"

"Sir, with respect, I did not get tip staves by failing to respect the chain of command."

There was a pause on the end of the line. When Ser Jacelyn Bywater came back on the line, he sounded considerably calmer. "Sorry, Barristan, you didn't deserve that. Who was it that spilled?" He'd clearly decided murder could wait.

Barristan looked out the glass wall of his office, quickly focusing on one individual. "I don't know for certain, but I think we can both guess."

"Well, bawl him out, and if that doesn't work, tell me and I'll put him on a boat, teach him he doesn't work for daddy."

"Yes, sir."

"In other news, we're wanted at the 'hall at ten to brief the Mayor, don't be surprised if the CP is there as well." He was probably right, Renly Baratheon – the Chief Royal Solicitor for the King’s Landing – was entirely beholden to the Tyrells, though from what Barristan could gather from their few meetings, Renly seemed to think it was the other way around.

"Understood, we should ride together; keep with the Mayor's spirit of preventing waste." The opportunity this granted for the men to get their stories straight went unsaid.

"I couldn't agree more."

"Very well sir, I should also inform you that DCI Slynt is assisting with the investigation. Do you want him to accompany us?"

"Yes." There was a pause. "Did they really set Tywin Lannister on fire?"

"And shot him six times, sir."

"I'll see you in the garage at nine thirty, Barristan."

"Yes, sir." He put down the phone and carefully considered what to do next. There was no point in humiliating the lad any more than he had to and this room wasn't soundproof. Fortunately, the homicide unit did have two excellent and thoroughly soundproofed interrogation rooms.

He found Loras at his desk. "Tyrell, with me." Loras followed him into Interrogation 2 and Barristan slammed the door behind him.

"What is my rank, Sergeant?"

"Sir?"

"What. Is. My. Rank. Sergeant?

"Chief Inspector, sir."

"So you understand that I am, in fact, your superior?"

"Yes sir."

"And yet you saw fit to go behind not only my back but those of four other members of the chain of command, including the Commander of the City Watch and put our business in front of the Mayor?"

"With respect sir, this isn't some regular homicide, and he is my father." One the one hand, he'd at least had the decency not to deny it. On the other hand, the way he underlined his relationship with the Mayor suggested the boy thought he was invincible. He needed a reality check before things truly got out of hand and Barristan saw no reason to do that at a conversational volume.

"You bypassed the chain of command Sergeant. I just got off the phone with the Commander after he got woken in the middle of the night by the Mayor and asked questions he didn’t have answers for. The Commander himself has given me permission to do you. This is your last chance. You talk out of school one more time and you'll be riding a boat on the midnight shift, and you'll stay there, because no one will _ever_ want to take you off." Loras Tyrell paled. He'd gotten the message. Barristan lowered his voice. "You're right, this isn't some run of the mill homicide, we've got at least fourteen bodies and the whole goddam underworld as suspects. You didn't make sergeant in this unit by being stupid. So pull your head in and you'll go far. But remember what I said."

"Yes sir."

"Alright, get back out there and do your job."

Tyrell walked out first, and Barristan followed him.

In the bullpen the detectives, including Caron, Morrigen, Crane and Oakheart who had returned from their crime scenes, were discussing the various cases.

"All three of our guys were killed by shotgun wounds to the chest," said Crane.

"Same with us," said Oakheart.

Barristan sat back, Loras was the first to put it together. "What brand of shells did you pick up?" The three men pulled out their H-files and compared notes; all the shells had similar firing pin indentations.

"Son a bitch," breathed Morrigen.

"Someone pissed off the three largest gangs in King's Landing, are they suicidal?"

"No" said Brienne. "Committed. Roose Bolton and Walder Frey didn't come home last night, and Tywin Lannister was set on fire–"

"And shot six times," put in Hunt, looking immeasurably pleased with himself.

Brienne continued as if nothing had happened. "All three gangs are going to be in disarray, giving the robbers enough time to sell the gear and get the hell out of dodge, or to set up their own distribution network."

"You think robbery is a possible motive?" Barristan asked.

"It's a hell of a lot of noise for a robbery, but we're dealing with almost seventy million dragons in drugs here. People have killed for far less. And you always say that until we know for certain we should keep out options open."

"Kiss ass," said Crane.

"At least she listens," replied Barristan.

"These guys must have been pretty organised," said Loras. "In a single night, they robbed three main stash houses, killed Tywin Lannister–"

"And Gregor Clegane," said Barristan.

"He's dead?"

"Heart attack, around midnight. Not to mention that Walder Frey and Roose Bolton cannot be located."

"Hm. Anyway, like I said, it makes Eastern Shield look like slow motion. There had to have been a hell of a lot of planning behind this." EASTERN SHIELD was a Royal Army attack on a Dothraki army that was threatening Pentos. Despite the fact that the Pentoshi armies had been fighting a losing battle with the Dothraki for five years, the Royal Army had beaten them back across the Rhoyne in a little less than a month.

At that moment, Penny walked around the divider. "A patrol man just found a Royce Motors car with a dead body inside. Kid had the good sense to run the plates; it's listed in the computer as belonging to one Roose Bolton.

"In his own name?" Brienne asked.

"So communications says."

"They got sloppy."

"And paid for it," agreed Oakheart.

"What was this enterprising young Watchman's name?" Barristan asked.

"Don't know, but I can find out."

"Please do.” He turned to Loras and Cuy. “Get out there.”

"Norris and Krutchfield are up." The rotation. The way things were done. It made him want to puke even as he did nothing to change it, because to change the system, even the smallest bit, would suggest that those, such as the Criminal Investigation Section’s Superintendent or the Central Operations Division’s Chief Superintendent, who had built their careers on the stats, were incompetent, and would draw their ire down on one Chief Inspector Barristan Selmy.

“The two of you are going to see connections that they wouldn’t just because you have experience with the case.” Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to change things, just this once.

“You’re assuming a connection, when it could just be coincidence.”

"This many bodies on one night, all important members of the city’s three biggest drug outfits, are not a statistical aberration. I think it’s safe to assume that all of these murders are connected." Patterns are good, patterns make for more closures. It couldn’t be bad, especially if this case was enough to have the Mayor calling the Commander at four o’clock in the morning.

***

Daylight did not bring better news. In addition to the fifteen bodies he'd had by six am, Walder Frey and Roose Bolton, both, strangely enough, dressed in life jackets, and Walder Frey's bodyguards had been found. Nineteen bodies. Someone had checked, in all the years since the KLCW had kept records, there had never been that many dead in a single night. And that wasn’t even counting the domestic dispute and the liquor store robbery gone bad that brought the total to twenty two murdered. In one night.

What was more, they now had no leads. Shae wasn't at her house or at the Silky Night. Ballistics had found no hits on any of the firearms used, even though the new Firearms Act required firearm sales in gun shops to be registered, there were still plenty of ways to get a firearm without them being registered. The cruiser used to facilitate the murders hadn't shown up, nor had the car used by the other killers. Only one of the stash houses had a domain awareness camera watching it, and that had been busted three days before persons unknown had smashed down the door of the stash house and killed all within, an hour after it had been repaired.

Barristan, Slynt and Bywater were sitting in the Mayor's office, having just laid out the whole case for him. In addition to Mace Tyrell, his son and Chief of Staff, Garlan, and his press secretary, Margaery, as well as Renly Baratheon, were all present. The last bomb that the trio had dropped was that Tywin was one of the city's largest drug dealers.

It took several goes before Mace Tyrell could even speak. "So what you're telling me…"

"Gods," breathed Garlan.

"But…"

Margaery started laughing.

"Hey, this is my ass here."

"No, it's just that, Tywin was one of our biggest donors, our second largest, after the family. We are utterly fucked. Not only have we just presided over the single most violent night in five hundred years, we also consorted with a drug dealer."

"We didn't know that."

"Come father, do you really think that anyone will believe that? It's not like we checked how he made his money before we took it from him."

Mace turned to Renly and Bywater. "How did we not know about this? How is this not public knowledge?"

It was Barristan who spoke. "Tywin was charged once with murder. If I remember correctly, he made the mistake of dealing with the guy personally. There was a witness. It never got past the grand jury and so the records are sealed."

"Why not?"

"The witness died."

"Of what?"

"Acute lead poisoning."

"Great."

"Wasn't he wearing one of those tracking anklets?" Slynt asked.

"Yup, led us right to the body, those things work," replied Barristan.

"Bywater, these people need to be found, and not just because of the optics, you can't just murder nineteen people and get away with it. This cannot stand." The man sounded like he was already putting together his press conference speech.

"Sir, I'll have my people get their heads together, see if they can't work this out. But it's going to take time and resources.”

"However much money you need, but I'm going to need results fast if I'm going to survive this."

"Understood sir." Barristan wondered if Bywater knew the kind of promise he was making. He probably did, and in any case it wasn't like he had a choice about making it.

"Right, Margaery we need to get a speech prepared..." Then the intercom buzzed.

The male voice was surprisingly calm given the news he was about to deliver. "Sir, Miss Tyrell, I have a reporter on the line, he wants to know if I have a comment on some pictures showing a Captain Slynt accepting money from Tywin Lannister, who he says is a known drug trafficker."

Barristan looked at Slynt, who had gone utterly pale. Everyone knew Slynt was corrupt, hell if the whole world didn't know it, but Barristan couldn't believe he'd been stupid enough to actually get caught with his hand out. The whole Watch would burn for this.

Mace just looked at his desk, no doubt contemplating the impending end of his political career.

In the end, it was Margaery who spoke, a note of sad humour in her voice. "When it's not your day."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Blackton and Southside are, of course, made up. Even for a bunch who are involved in a blood feud with their enemies, the Court of Kings Landing don't get out much in the books. Blackton is west of the ASOIAF-era King's Landing, the latter is on the south bank of the Blackwater, both are suburbs in Greater Kings Landing, which is sort of like London.
> 
> As always reviews and constructive criticism are welcome.


	4. Blood

_It had all began the day Robb had been sentenced for possession with intent to distribute. More exactly it had all begun the day Eddard Stark and Robert Baratheon had helped Jon Arryn chained a fridge to Petyr Baelish's ankles and thrown both man and fridge into Blackwater Bay. Because that's what you do for a friend when some idiot steals from him and screws his wife. Hoster Tully would have helped too, but he was already in the final stages of the dementia that ultimately claimed his life._

_But for Sansa it had begun the day she'd seen her brother locked away for twenty years. She'd dropped out of Uni when her father died to take care of her mother. When Robb was arrested, the house and the family businesses had been seized and most of their bank accounts had been frozen. The day her brother had been sentenced to twenty years in prison, Sansa had sat in the courtroom for a long time after Uncle Brynden had led her catatonic mother away, thinking about what to do. She doubted anyone would listen to her protestations of Robb’s innocence, even if she found proof. It was a good arrest for everyone, bringing the Stark-Lannister war to an end. And it was unlikely that sje would be able to finish law school and live a quiet life, certainly not in KL, after more than thirty years spent under the radar, the Stark name had been plastered all over the papers the last two years, not an association that a law school, let alone a city law firm would want, and she had mever lived anywhere but KL, she didn't have the relationships to go to a small town, even if she wanted to. She somehow doubted she could stomach forty years cutting richer women's hair or doing their nails. Even if Tywin left their family alone, which was unlikely, he had a long and storied reputation as a vicious bastard. When Reyne had tried to go his own way, Tywin had not only killed him and his sons, but run bankrupted his brothers car dealership, and gotten his daughter thrown out of university._

_There really was only one path to take. As her father said,once you decide to do something, the only thing left to do is to do it. She stood up and walked out of the courtroom._

_Her first stop had been to Luwin and Associates, to withdraw money from her trust account. Her second was to a used car dealership, trading her convertible for a second-hand car. Her third was eight hundred miles away._

***

Sansa sat at the bar, just watching the proceedings. She didn’t even need to be here, she trusted Brynden to relay her instructions and being here increased her exposure. But she liked to see her plans be put into motion.

Besides Brynden and Sansa, six men were gathered in the back office of the Smoking Log. All were now the proud owners of taxi medallions granted by the city, for the mere price of one and a quarter million dragons, per medallion. It seemed a good way to find the Lannisters without exposing their people to being shot in the head.

Brynden handed each of the men a piece of paper. “Alright boys, the six of you are going to be driving around the West side, looking for the boys out on the corners. You see one, you call it in to the first number.” Then some more guys and girls in an apartment would relay the calls to the local Watch house, which would in turn send out Watchmen to arrest said dealers for possession or loitering and generally interrupt the Lannister’s revenue stream. After all, that was their job, Sansa and her people couldn’t be blamed for doing their civic duty.

“You see a guy who looks to be muscle, call the second number.” At which point some of the Company’s soldiers would show up and check it out, and then, if necessary, kill them.

“And don’t forget, pick up the occasional fare, it looks good and you get to keep all the money.”

***

"I have to say, watching Margaery Tyrell squirm is practically porn."

"I don't find it hard to believe that you think that Harry," Sansa replied. That got a few laughs from the bar. "I'm heading out." Gyles and Harry both got up from their respective tables and followed her out into the street.

She'd been putting this off for days; in truth she'd been putting it off for more than a year. But it had to be done, no matter how uncomfortable it would be.

The radio was switched to a news station, Harry's choice, as Margaery Tyrell announced a new initiative to fight corruption city wide. The irony. Sansa tuned it out.

***

_When she'd gotten to Gulltown, she'd booked into a charge by the hour motel, put her suitcase under the bed and then walked six blocks to find a pay phone. Tywin had real money and she didn't want some Whisperer telling him where she was staying._

_The meeting between her and Lysa Tully was the next day._

_"Hold on there, little lady." Sansa turned and saw a man not much older than her getting out of a beat up car. "Harry Hardyng."_

_"Sansa Stark. I'm here to talk to Lysa Tully, I have an appointment."_

_"You got some ID."_

_"I do not. Nor do I need any."_

_At that point Harry put his hand on her shoulder. "I can't just let anyone in to see them." His hand shifted down to her upper arm. As much as Sansa wanted to bury the toe of her shoes between his thighs, it wouldn't get her into the building. So she fixed him with her best icy stare. Harry's hand stopped its descent, but he didn't remove it either._

_Their impasse was broken by the door opening. Brynden Tully walked into the sunlight._

_The meeting with Lysa had not gone well. Once Sansa had laid out her case, one she'd spent the last few days thinking through, Lysa's answer had been immediate._

_"No."_

_"No?"_

_"The Lannisters are too strong. How would you even begin to oppose them?"_

_"At least I'm not sitting around while everything my family built turns to rubble." Not her smartest move, she realised, but it was the truth. A year ago, the Arryns had controlled organised crime in Gulltown, Maidenpool, White Harbour and Duskendale. Now, with Jon Arryn dead, it was barely hanging on to parts of Gulltown as new crews – some of them made up of defecting Arryn soldiers – contested the Arryns for control of the city._

_"My priority is the protection of my family."_

_"We are your family."_

_"Robert is my family. You should look to yours."_

_Sansa wanted to scream, and preferably flip over the table; instead she rose and excused herself, bidding her aunt a good day – politeness is important._

_Just before she put her hand on the front door, someone grabbed her arm. Sansa whirled, only to see that it was Brynden. "Lysa ordered me to stay in the next room so I heard what you said." It was so nice to know that her aunt trusted her. "Are you sure you want this?"_

_"They took everything from me, they have to pay."_

_"Your father didn't want this life for any of you."_

_"He thought we'd have a choice, we no longer have that luxury." Brynden nodded._

_"In that case, I can help you; you certainly can't do it yourself."_

_"What about Lysa?"_

_"She never goes out and I'll be sure to leave some muscle to take care of her. She won't be able to control the city, but she can't do that now."_

_"Alright."_

_"In that case, give me a few days to settle things here."_

_Two days later Brynden had shown up in a pair of SUVs together with six of his men, including Harry, which had sent the manager and the local drug dealers running off down the street. He'd given her a new ID – complete with passport, driver's license and birth certificate in the name of Alayne Stone – and a Waters Arms 9mm pistol._

_"So, the Arryns won't help us and Otto Hightower won't either after that unpleasantness with his nephew." Sansa had thought it prudent not to ask what the unpleasantness was. "Lannisport works for Tywin, even if they claim independence, so we can't expect any help there. So, let's go see the Martells."_

***

Catelyn Stark lived in a five storey walk up, a shoebox apartment that was barely big enough for her and Rickon, which probably explained why he was seldom there. The other explanation was immediately obvious when Sansa walked in the door. Catelyn Stark sat by one of the few windows in the apartment, staring at nothing. For the first time, Sansa was forced to acknowledge that Lysa may have had a point.

Sansa knelt down beside her mother's chair. "Mama."

The broken woman in the chair turned to her. "Sansa?"

"Yes Mama, it's me."

"You look so thin dear, have you been eating?"

"Yes Mama."

"You've been away for so long." The sadness in her mother's voice almost broke Sansa's heart.

"I had to go away Mama, but I'm back now, I promise I’ll visit more often, and I'm going to get you a nicer place, somewhere Bran can come visit you." Catelyn Stark nodded, a small smile beginning to form on her lips. Sansa decided to leave out the possibility of Robb's return, if the Appeal Division ruled against him, it would only break her heart all over again. "Would you like some tea Mama?

"Yes sweetheart. Thank you." Sansa gave her mother's hand a quick squeeze and then walked into the kitchen, where she found her brother drinking juice straight out of the carton.

"Hey."

"Hey." Rickon seemed utterly unconcerned with his sister’s sudden reappearance in his life.

There was an awkward interlude while Rickon pulled out some meat and a loaf of bread and made himself a sandwich. "How are you?"

"Like you care." He tried to walk past her.

Sansa grabbed Rickon's arm. "I care. What do you think I've been doing for the last year? Trying to help this family. And what's this I hear about you getting into fights at school, you're only making this harder for her." She felt Brynden move up behind her.

"You don't get to say to me. I'm the one who has to stay here and watch her fall apart."

"You think it's easy for me. He was my father, she is my mother, Robb is my brother. I am just as angry as you are." She gathered her breath as Rickon stood with a chastened look on his face. "It's not easy, but if you let that anger get control of you, you'll never be able to do anything about it. And even then it requires sacrifice, and believe me when I say it's not easy."

"It's hard not to be angry." Sansa's heart wanted to break all over again.

"That it is mate," said Brynden, who had been waiting in the doorway. "Tell you what, I'll take you down to the gym while your sister talks to your Mother. It always helped me out."

"Okay."

"Then give your sister a hug." The two embraced before Rickon and Brynden left the apartment. Sansa set about making tea. Right or wrong, Rickon was still her brother and both he and their mother needed her.

***

_Oberyn Martell hadn't been as intimidating as she'd expected. Dressed in a loose-fitting suit and no tie he was a picture of relaxation. Though to be honest Sansa had been expecting leathery skin and fangs, given the Red Viper's reputation._

_The Water Gardens resort was everything the tourist ads said it was, fine dining, clean casinos, an enormous set of pools, apparently there was even_ _a_ _health spa buried away somewhere in the comple_ _x_ _. Sansa and Brynden were sitting at a table_ _with Oberyn_ _while the parties' respective bodyguards occupied_ _tables close by._

_"So, just to be clear, you want us to back you in a war against Tywin Lannister, not just with money but with men as well, putting us in danger of open war with the Lannisters, which would bring with it the loss of our connections with the Essosi importers and the kind of attention we have worked strenuously to avoid. And you intend that we will not get a share of the King's Landing trade, so in effect you offer us nothing."_

_"Other than Tywin Lannister's head on a stick, yes." The demise of her father had not been the first time that Tywin had acted without regard to collateral damage. Before Sansa was born it had been Tywin that had put a bomb beneath Rhaegar Targaryen's car, killing Rhaegar along with his wife, Elia Targaryen, nee Martell, and their two children. It had ended the war that had broken the Targaryen monopoly on imports, but it also cost Tywin his share in the spoils, forcing him to buy from Jon Arryn and cemented his reputation as a merciless bastard, as well as earning him the Martell's enduring hatred._

_"Very well. Assuming you succeed, would you agree to stand neutral if we were to expand our operations into Duskendale and Gulltown?"_

_"No."_

_"Lysa Tully has clearly abandoned you or you would not be here."_

_"That doesn't mean she isn't family," Sansa stated firmly._

_Oberyn shrugged. "It was worth a try, I will convey your terms to my brother."_

_Sansa spent the next three days lying by the pool, swimming, walking around the grounds and pacing her room. One night she'd run into Mrycella Baratheon and Trystane Martell, and she couldn't help but envy the way they looked at each other. Strange, considering that their parents hated each other._

_At around 10pm on the third day, Sansa was playing limit Trident hold 'em, which differed from Mander hold 'em in ways Sansa didn't fully understand, with Harry and a couple of the other guys while Uncle Brynden pecked away at a keyboard. Harry was more respectful now; Sansa assumed it had something to do with the yellowing bruise around his left eye. Sansa looked at the three men seated around the table, and added the equivalent of five dragons._

_Gyles and Jory folded, but Harry was more stubborn. "I see your five, and raise you another five." Sansa was fairly certain he was bluffing, so she added her own chips to match his raise. Gyles dealt the river and just for a second, Harry's face fell._

_Gyles wasn't going to let him off the hook that easy. "Come on Harry, she hasn't got anything better than a pair." Harry looked at Sansa long and hard before adding another five to the pot. Sansa bet as well._

_They showed down. Harry had a two pair, while Sansa had a full house._

_There was a knock on the door. All three men pulled pistols out of their waistbands. Brynden took cover behind a corner while Harry knelt behind a couch, while Gyles called one of the other rooms to get the guys there to poke their heads out to see what was going on. Sansa stepped back out of the line of fire and drew the pistol that Brynden had spent a few days teaching her how to use. No one actually approached the door._

_The person at the door knocked again, and there were muffled voices on the other side, a question and a reply. Gyles heard something on the phone and put it down. "It's Quentyn and Arianne." The men put their pistols away. Harry opened the door._

_Once they were seated, it was Quentyn who spoke first. "Our father finds your terms acceptable. We will provide you with four men and access to bank accounts. We trust you will not exploit us." A rather stupid thing to say, as if the four men that still worked for the Martells were not also there to ensure that there was no double cross._

_It made Sansa wonder whether Quentyn was really Doran's underboss. "And if we should need more?"_

_Quentyn hesitated and so it was Arianne who answered. "This is a one-time deal, you screw up, we won't be coming to your aid again." Question answered._

_"Well, I deeply appreciate your help in this matter." She rose to shake hands with both of them. "I know we can't promise success, but I nonetheless hope that we shall have a long and profitable relationship in future."_

_She said the last part looking directly at Arianne, who nodded in reply. "When you see Tywin, say goodbye from us."_

_"I will."_

_"Our men will be waiting downstairs in the morning," said Quentyn._

_"Thank you." The two left._

_Brynden turned to her. "What was that all about?"_

_"Just finding out who's going to succeed Doran?"_

_"And what use is that?"_

_"At the moment, nothing, but that doesn't mean I can't keep an eye on the long game. Now, I have some money to win."_

***

Crownlands Penitentiary was an old place, clanging doors, guards shouting, and even in the visitor's room, Sansa was not comfortable here. She hoped she would never have to be here again, but she forced herself to acknowledge it as a possibility, as Brynden was fond of saying: it is only very stupid people who think the cops are stupid.

Robb dropped into the chair behind the plexiglass and picked up the phone. "Hey sis."

"Hi Robb, you well."

"I love it here, its lucky I'm going to be here for the next decade."

"Getting into any fights?"

"Never, I'm a good boy." That surprised her, maybe she'd been wrong about Tywin. "So what took you so long? You get lost or something?"

Samsa shifted uncomfortably, this was a conversation she hadn't been looking forward to. "Something like that."

"You know, Jon came to visit me, and he spends most of his life running up and down the Frostfangs."

"They only do the Fan Dance once."

"He's still in the SAS and he still came to see me when you didn't, even though he's our cousin and you're my sister."

"Prison has turned you into such a whiner."

"I merely wanted to know why you didn't come to see me or Mother for the last year."

"I spent three hours with Mother this morning."

"Yeah and before that?"

"It's complicated."

"No, quadratic equations are complicated. Being there for your family, that's simple. Hell, that's human nature" There was more than a little hurt in Robb's voice, and anger, no doubt on behalf of their mother.

"I can't explain now," she said slowly, giving Robb a meaningful look. All conversations in the visitation room , except those covered by spousal and solicitor-client privilege, were recorded. "I take it you've heard about recent events."

He nodded. "There's not much to do here except read the papers and watch TV. Besides, Great Jon and Galbert Glover can't stop singing 'ding dong the witch is dead'."

"I meant about Janos Slynt."

"Jeyne told me. Have to say the irony pleases me. And I look forward to seeing him."

"You won't, he's not being sent here. Apparently, he's being sent to the Wall." Not that she wanted Robb to have any alone time with Slynt. The entire point was to get him out of prison, after all.

"Pity." There was a pause and Sansa could tell that her brother wanted to ask her something about those recent events, and she was thankful when he didn't. "Any updates on my appeal?"

"Luwin said that they'll make a decision on an appeal bond sometime next week."

"Hm." Robb gave another significant pause. "Sansa, if you ever find out who shot Tywin, they get a bottle of bourbon on me. And spend some more time with Mum."

"I will."

"So how's Bran? The last time I saw him he was still in rehab from the shooting, just another thing I thought I had more time for."

"He's good, he has a job, bookkeeping for a few different firms and he's doing an accounting course at community college.

"Good, and Rickon?

"He's run a little wild, fights at school, but I think we can get him back on the right track."

"Good he'll need you. So, what have you been doing with yourself?

"Well…"

***

_Brynden and Sansa had arrived back in King's Landing almost three months after Robb Stark had been sentenced, a year after her father had died. One of their first stops was her mother's apartment. The two of them had driven in together, with the others driving in separate cars._

_"You should go in."_

_"If Tywin's smart, and he is, he'll be watching. The only advantage we have is surprise."_

_"She's your mother."_

_"You think I'm not aware of that?"_

_"You might never get a chance to see her again."_

_"I know, but we've already said our goodbyes."_

_"If you're sure?"_

_"I am."_

_"In that case, w_ _hats the next move boss?"_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before anybody asks where I get the ideas for these horrible deaths from, the inspiration for Petyr's death came from the fate of Brian Alexander, a character in season 2 of the Australian show "Underbelly". And who says violent television doesn't affect us ;).
> 
> The Fan Dance is a 24km march up and down Pen y Fan which must be completed in four and a quarter hours. It isn't even the hardest thing someone has to do to get into the SAS.
> 
> Also, I realised when I was writing this chapter that putting Tywin's house in Rosby placed him about 75km from King's Landing. We'll just say that Rosby contracts its policing out to KLCW and that Tywin is able to run a criminal organisation from nearly an hour's drive away, or something.
> 
> As always constructive criticism and general adulation are welcome.


	5. Task Force Viserion

Janos Slynt cracked almost as soon as Internal Investigations sat him down. He'd confessed to being part of a network of officers who protected and occasionally did jobs for Tywin Lannister. By the time he'd realised what he was doing and shut his mouth, there was too much for I.I. to ignore, especially with the article. In addition to Slynt, all four of the unit's inspectors, eight of the sergeants and more than half of the Detectives had been suspended and most of them would go before a trial board before the month was out. Unlike Slynt, they'd all had the decency to keep their mouths shut.

Obviously the 'hall and the bosses had decided that it was better to endure the embarrassment of an obviously corrupt narcotics unit than to have a Royal Commission established, or worse, an Independent Conduct Authority. It probably wouldn't be enough to save them, especially if the investigation spread.

In any case, it would be weeks before the unit could put itself back together. In the meantime, Barristan had a red ball to end all red balls to deal with. The offices of Task Force Viserion – Barristan had no idea how they had come up with that name – were located in some spare office space at the West Barracks, which served as headquarters of the City Watch.

With almost everyone in Narcotics under investigation, Barristan was having to make do with "Detectives" from the District Drug Enforcement Units, as well as a few people from Vice and the Intelligence Section. However, he'd managed to get the Constable who'd found Bolton's driver, Podrick Payne, detailed to the Criminal Investigation Section, and he'd appointed Brienne to oversee the drugs side of the investigation, as she'd been in Narcotics before transferring to Homicide.

Loras walked in. "Jaime Lannister is dead."

"How?"

“A woman, small, who was quote ‘hot as balls with curves in all the right places,’ rode up on the back seat of a motorcycle and emptied a two pistols into his head and chest, then she and her driver rode off into the sunrise.”

“You know who that sounds like?”

“Arya Stark.” Not that such a basic description would ever hold up in court. But then, there weren’t all that many axe-crazy females who were only five and half feet tall.

"Well, rest in peace." There would be more than one case closed due to death of a known suspect with that man, a term Barristan used in the broadest possible sense, in the ground. Not to mention that rumour had it Jaime had been the leader of the crew that lit up The Twins.

"Yeah."

"Anything on forensics?"

"One 9mm pistol used, 18 hits, 9 strays; all thirty casings were collected and three of the bullets are suitable for comparison."

"What about the other three?"

"Excuse me?"

"A 9mm holds fifteen rounds, but eighteen plus nine is only twenty seven bullets."

"Not sure. I'll follow up."

"Witnesses?"

"Bike was a Gargalen 1000, reported stolen this morning, as yet unfound.” They'd never found the cars used in what the press had called the 'Saturday Night Massacre', so Barristan wasn't holding out much hope. “Both rider and passenger were wearing helmets."

“Motorcycle safety is important.”

“Should we pick Stark up?”

“It can’t hurt. But don’t expect miracles.”

“I never do, but at least then my surprises are always good ones.”

"Indeed. Anything else?"

"Robb Stark got his appeal bond."

"I heard." The King's Justice – or whichever of his subordinates he'd farmed it out to – had apparently decided that there was no point extending Robb Stark's stay in prison.

"Justice prevails," put in Hunt sarcastically.

"And now the public are going to think we're all corrupt."

"I'm sure quite a few of them believed that before, and we can overcome it by working hard and sticking to the rules." He decided it was best to end this discussion. "Anything on the homicides?"

"Nothing so far. And seeing as the CIG no longer exists, I have to go to each department directly to try to find out about the Stark's movements. They haven't gotten back to me yet." The Criminal Intelligence Group had been the Realm's primary clearinghouse for information gathered by local police departments, HM Customs, and regional crime squads. The Group had been closed after the Whisperer's entire budget had been earmarked to foreign intelligence and internal security rather than criminal investigation. Apparently, someone had gone after a few nobles for corruption and tax evasion and that was the nobles' way of pushing back.

"Why even look?"

"One of my CIs said that Sansa Stark hadn't been seen around town since her brother went away and now she's popped her head back up. I've got calls into Gulltown and Sunspear, seemed like good places to start. My thinking is that she was running errands for her brother, putting together the hit on Tywin and co at Robb’s orders.

"Hmm. Good thinking."

Barristan walked over to the collection of tables that housed his drug squad. Brienne was at one end with a few of the DEU people and Podrick writing reports.

"What do you have?"

"Well, our DEU boys have been using the light weight body mikes and cameras you got us to do controlled buys all over the city." The mikes came from one of Barristan's friend in the Whisperers. The recent demise of the Whisperer's criminal investigation division had left his friend with a few toys to spare. "We found something surprising. In the former Bolton area and almost half of Southside, the corner crews are selling something they're calling Blue Magic."

"Blue Magic?"

"Indeed."

"What's Blue Magic?" asked Payne.

"It's what the Starks used to call their product," explained Barristan.

"So the Starks are taking back their old turf?"

"Or someone else wants everyone to think they are."

"Who else could it be?"

"We don't know, and as obvious as the Starks are, we don't want to focus on them without evidence. Otherwise we'll start seeing evidence when it isn't really there, and then when we get to court, the Stark's high-priced lawyers blow us out of the water. We build this case on the evidence or not at all."

"So what now?"

Barristan turned back to Brienne, who had sat patiently listening as he unofficially schooled Payne in Detective Work 101. "Did you find any stash houses for the purveyors of Blue Magic?"

"Three, but you know as well as I do that they change the houses every day."

"We'll hit them anyway; these kids could well have left something behind. Maybe someone will flip."

"They won't. The kids know they can't be hurt by a street weight charge and the adults understand the consequences of cooperating with us."

"But just to be sure, you're going to spend a couple of days being told to fuck off by fourteen year olds and you get a valuable lesson in how it's a bad idea to be a pessimist." Podrick smirked and tried to hide it, but Barristan caught him. "You can take the kid." Podrick's smirk disappeared and Brienne would have been able to hide her own from someone who hadn't known her as long as Barristan had.

"What about the other buys?" Podrick asked.

"We'll let them go for now, the DEU boys can take the stats once the case is over. Their reward for a job well done," he said, nodding towards the DEU detectives who grinned. No doubt they'd been worried how their own Chief Inspector would respond to a decrease in drug arrests in his own district.

***

The detectives of Task Force Viserion, together with watchmen pulled from the districts carried out their raids with efficiency, if not precision. The cars rolled in from all directions, the watchmen poured out and quickly broke down the door that had been identified as a stash house while the detectives identified those who had been caught by the buys.

Barristan himself led the Stokeworth raid, which had the loosest crew and so he expected it to be the one that gave them the break they needed. He took a position on a set of steps at one end of the block, where he could see the whole street. While he would have liked to be down on the street with his people, he had been forced to acknowledge that, after 35 years in the Watch, he was not as young as he used to be.

Off to one side, Loras was cuffing one of the older kids who had been photographed selling drugs, the boy bucked back against him and so Loras threw him against a car. The boy's answer was instantaneous, "Fuck you, faggot." Loras, clearly used to slurs regarding his sexual orientation, ignored him but his partner, Cuy, buried his fist in the boy's gut. Though there were no media cameras present, yet, and the people on this street were too poor to afford cell phones with cameras, it would be best to put a lid on this.

The idiot kid was still struggling when Barristan got over to him. "Trouble?"

"Nothing we can't handle boss."

"You in charge? These cocksuckers be beating on me, I want to file a complaint."

Barristan rolled his eyes, the boy would probably never learn. The unit could be oddly protective of Loras. "From what I saw it was self-defence."

As expected, there were no drugs in the searched houses, and while one of the crews were sufficiently raggedy that the controlled buys and surveillance had managed to get what the DEU detectives thought was a crew chief in Stokeworth, Brienne and Podrick were met with an impenetrable wall of fuck you. Except for the crew chief, who said no comment, even when threatened with five years for supply of Class A drugs.

While there was nothing at the site of the stash house in Blackton, Hunt had found a number written on one of the Southside stash house walls with the word 'D' written beside them. Everyone screws up eventually.

***

Barristan should have known better. Brienne gave the bad news the next week. "It’s a pager number."

He couldn't hide his disappointment. "A pager?

"Yeah."

"Who uses pagers anymore?"

"The crew chief for one, he tossed as I rolled up on him but Pod picked it up."

"Did anyone else in the crews use pagers?"

"No one we picked up, they were all mostly low level but we don't even know who either of the other crew chiefs are in the other two crews."

"Fine, we clone the pagers, see where that leads us." He almost moved on to Loras and his homicides but then he turned back. "What do you mean they don't know who the crew chiefs are?"

"To quote 'we're knocking heads and taking bodies, I didn't know we were supposed to be taking a census or something.'"

"Watchmen trying to figure the job for themselves," Barristan spoke under his breath.

"Sorry?"

"Something my Inspector said when I became a Sergeant." The speech was longer than what Barristan had said and, as he'd later realised, a tacit admission to corrupt behaviour.

Brienne looked and Loras, who shrugged. "I lit a fire under their arse, they're out taking pictures, but they don't have the first clue on how to work anything more than low level possession or how to get an informant. When this meeting's over I'll go talk to one of my own."

"They don't have informants?" asked Loras.

"I quote 'We're not at West Barracks, we're out here in the trenches, we don't have time for that shit. You want information, you get your own CI and you talk to them.' End quote."

"And people wonder why we can't keep on top of this here."

Barristan couldn't bring himself to disagree. He turned to Loras. "Anything on the bodies."

"None of the casings used in the murder of Jaime Lannister match those used in the other murders, so I expect their dumping the weapons after the job, which fits with how careful they are with forensics and the missing cars, plus the balaclavas. BID says that they were not registered and they haven’t shown up in other cases, which means they’re being brought at gun shows and disposing of them afterwards."

The Ballistics Information Database and the DNA Databank were run out of the Laws rather than the Whisperers and so had survived the cutting and burning that the Great Council had administered to the better part of the Realm's national crime fighting ability. Thank the Mother for small mercies. Though the new Arms Act had, in truth, done very little to curb the supply of illegal firearms, the “compromise measure” had ensured that it was legal for “private citizens” to sell firearms without a license and withheld the resources to ensure that these private citizens weren’t firearms manufacturers.

"I've got calls into both cities looking for connections but they're busy, Gulltown especially."

"Alright then, you and yours can help type up the warrant for the pager, clearly Brienne's people lack the training for that."

"Will do."

"Then your people will monitor the pager, and any other numbers we link to that pager, here. Brienne, your DEU people need to get us a better picture of the King's Landing drug trade. No arrests, I don't care if they see a hundred kilos of dope and coke change hands. The last thing we need is for these people to change up."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A part of me didn’t want to kill Jaime, his journey in ASOS and AFFC is really interesting but in this time line he didn’t get captured by Robb and so retains the arrogance that gets his head shot off here (plus his Dad just died, so he’s not thinking clearly). Oh well.
> 
> Reviews and constructive criticism are appreciated.


	6. Reaction

_As it turned out, peace had made Tywin Lannister, Roose Bolton and Walder Frey sloppy. Of the three, Walder was the most cautious, but even he went out on the town on a regular basis, even if he did it one of three different cars. But those cars hadn't changed in the three months that their team had been watching. Tywin spent most of his time either at his office in Riverside or his house in Rosby, though he occasionally went out for dinner or to one of a few clubs. Roose Bolton held court almost every night in the Red Lounge, a club in northern King's Landing, and had a car in his own name._

_Hundreds of surveillance photos, buildings plans and maps of King's Landing, Rosby and Stokeworth were plastered on the wall. Off to one side were several lockers filled with a variety of shotguns and pistols brought from car-boot gun dealers in cities all over the country during the last six months and one rifle brought from a soldier with a gambling problem._

_Arya and Sansa were pulling down the pictures and maps and putting them through a shredder before packing them into garbage bags._

_"I want to go with you."_

_"No."_

_"Why not?"_

_"Because if we fail, then they'll come for all of you. After you take out Clegane, I need someone to get Mum and Rickon out, and Bran can't climb five flights of stairs." And I don't trust you not to go crazy and make a mess._

_"And you don't trust me not to go crazy and make a mess. You're wrong, I can handle it."_

_Sansa had to stop and process that for a moment. "There are sixteen people who would disagree, if they were still in a position to do speak, or even move."_

_"The Lexington Avenue crew wasn't me, I swear. And don't try to ignore the fact that you don't trust me anymore."_

_"The dozen people you killed to get your revenge fix would say you can't be relied on to control yourself."_

_"Do not try to make me sound like some contemptible junkie just so you can justify the things you did to satisfy your own need," Arya replied, indicating the hundreds of photos that the girls were currently in the process of destroying._

_"It's not about revenge." Arya fixed her sister with a look. "Okay, it's not just about revenge," Sansa admitted._

_"And you're going to kill more people than I have."_

_"All things going according to plan, I'm only killing one person."_

_"If you applied that logic then you shouldn't have a burning need to kill Tywin, just the guys who pulled the trigger on Dad."_

_"They all chose to play this game."_

_"Explain to me how that makes you any different from me."_

_"Maybe it doesn't. But even if you're right and I should trust you, then my other reasons still stand. We still need someone to get Mum and Rickon out if this all goes pear-shaped."_

_"And you think that should be me," said Arya, indicating her hair and multitude of body piercings._

_"Like I said, Bran isn't available."_

_"Hmm."_

_"Listen, I'm sorry. I know that I need to earn your trust back too. Just know that I'm doing it because I want to protect you. If you go off on Tywin and leave some clue behind, then there's nothing I can do to protect you, and I don't want to see you go to jail."_

_"I'm insulted that you think they could hold me." Sansa started laughing and Arya soon joined in and for the briefest of moments Sansa was taken back to those infrequent times when they were children and it felt like they were sisters._

_The two girls went back to pulling down photos. "So, who did the Lexington Avenue crew?"_

***

"She's going to hate me." Arya fidgeted nervously as she, Sansa, Brynden and Bran stood, or in Bran’s case sat, in the middle of the Smoking Log.

"She is not going to hate you." A classic rock track was playing in the background, a genre that hadn’t Sansa’s favourite, but her father had been a fan and the happy memories it evoked had increased her appreciation.

"She is. I should go."

"She is not going to hate you. She's going to hate your hair. And your piercings. And your clothes." Sansa couldn’t resist.

"Hey-."

"She's right, Arya, and you know it, so don't argue," stated Bran.

"But she is not going to hate seeing you, quite the opposite in fact," put in Sansa.

"Besides if you try to leave, pup, I'll just tie you to a chair out back," put in Brynden, who had clearly tired of all this emotion.

"Like you could."

"I may be old, but experience has made me cunning."

"And decrepit."

"Is that any way to treat your elders?"

"I treat my elders with the respect they deserve."

Sansa tuned the rest of the conversation out. The fact that Arya could still joke and tease was either a sign that her sister had managed to come back from the ball of anger she'd been the first few weeks after the sisters had reunited, or cause for serious concern.

Many of the men who had once formed the core of the Company were already present. Men, and one woman, who would soon have to be put to work, or they would probably go find work of their own. Fortunately, work was one of the things Sansa currently had an excess of.

The bad news was that since Jaime's death, the Lannisters had all gone underground. Though their muscle patrolled the streets, they were mainly sticking to their own areas. She'd made a conscious decision to focus on their own territory first before going after that of the Lannisters and Brynden and Bran had agreed with her. It helped that a great many Stark crews were still around and willing to go back to work for their old bosses.

Sansa was brought out of her contemplations when the front door of the bar opened. Catelyn Stark walked in, flanked by her youngest and eldest sons. Sansa led the others over and embraced her mother and brothers, though she had seen them all earlier in the day.

Sansa watched as Rickon escorted his mother around the room. "He shouldn't be in this life."

"Neither should you, but here we all are," Robb shrugged before leaning down close to whisper in Sansa's ear. "We need to talk."

"Now?" She whispered back.

"I'm worried about my little sister."

"I can handle myself."

"Indulge me."

"It can wait until tomorrow."

"If we don't do it now, I'll spend the rest of the night worrying and neither of us will be able to have any fun."

"Fine, follow me." Sansa led him towards the back of the bar, beckoning Bran over as she went. He quickly wheeled himself over and they all went to the back room of the bar

Robb looked around. "You always have your meetings here?"

"Not anymore, I was talking to Mum the other day; she suggested that I read some papers down at the Courthouse," said Sansa.

"Papers?"

"All the documents for a case are open to the public once the case is done. She suggested I read all the drug case files. Which I've been doing, eight hours a day, for the last week."

"Huh." Sansa hadn't known that until their mother had told her either. In fact, in the last few weeks Catelyn Stark had demonstrated an understanding of the drug trade and the city's politics that Sansa hadn't known she'd possessed. To her, her mother had always been just that, her mother, not her father's partner in crime, as it were.

"So anyway, the first time they got Robert Baratheon, they used a camera and microphone drilled from the room next door. So we're going to move it around, stay outdoors, vacant lots and such."

"Is it even safe to talk here?"

"It's a free-standing building; there are guards on the corners. No one's come near the place."

"Do I need to memorise phone numbers?"

"Pager codes; we don't even own cell-phones, better to avoid the temptation," she said. _I do possess basic competence,_ she thought. Which probably wasn't fair to Robb. Then again, he was the one who'd gotten caught with twenty kilos of heroin in his car.

"No talking?"

"Not unless it's face to face. Mum said that the Watch is going to come after us hard for a while but they'll back off the case once things quieten down, and the politicians are going to need money for the next elections. A need Tywin can no longer satisfy."

Robb nodded. "She's doing better."

"Yeah she is. Especially since she heard you were coming home."

"She's getting her family back."

"Yeah."

He turned to Bran. "And what's your role in this?"

"The count. And before you object I know, but it has to be someone we can trust, and you know how Sansa is with sums."

"And don't worry, I took steps," said Sansa.

"Steps?"

"Brynden's trained his people in counter-surveillance, the cops are following them but they change carriers twice before they go to the house. So far they haven't been followed after the first handoff."

"What are you doing with the money?"

"There's a flight from Duskendale to Braavos two or three times a week. A day's profit fits nicely in a suitcase." And a few thousand was all it took to ensure the suitcases never went through an x-ray machine.

"Arya?"

"Luwin thinks the Watch has nothing."

"Thinks?"

"His sources are confident, unless there's something that isn't in the computer."

"Isn't there always." There hadn’t been a single note in the police computer for Robb’s case until after he was arrested, so their guys on the inside hadn’t been able to give them any warning.

"Hence, 'thinks'." All this was reminding Sansa of their need to re-establish old relationships and make new ones. Brynden had a partly legit PI business from the Arryn days that they could use as cover.

"Is she involved?"

"Some, she likes to be at the sharp end of things; she's come a long way."

"From where?"

"Between Dad and you and me all leaving and Mum going off the rails, she was in a dark place when she showed up at my door." Sansa remembered what Arya had said when Sansa had asked her how she'd survived on the streets with a Lannister price on her head. " _You move all the time, you sleep on trains and rooftops and you never let your guard down."_

"But she's better now, right."

"Better, but not the way she was."

"There's no going back for anyone."

"Yeah."

“I’m going to assume that we have a connect.”

“Fresh off the boat. The Pentoshi overcame their grief.” The fat one with the beard, who called himself Illyrio – though Sansa doubted that was his real name –, had been against supplying her as well as the Lannisters. The fat bald one with the effeminate voice had overruled his colleague.  So now they had a steady supply.

They all stood there for a moment before Robb spoke. "So, who did Tywin?"

"You owe me 60 dragons for the bottle of bourbon. It was amazing."

"You didn't answer my question."

"Well it sure wasn't me," said Bran.

Robb got it and for a second just looked at her, his mouth slightly agape. She patted him on the shoulder. "Now if there's nothing else." She left the room, her still somewhat confused brother in her wake. She walked over to the bar and signalled Kyra that she wanted a drink. There were a lot of people she wanted to catch up with. Who knew, maybe she'd be able to find someone to play poker against. Harry and Gyles no longer wanted to play against her, for she'd come a long way since she'd won that first hand in a room at the Water Gardens resort, but there was bound to be someone.

***

A few hours later, Sansa walked out of the Smoking Log, flanked by Harry and Gyles. Just before she got to the sedan that was one of the cars in which she drove about town.

She was half way out when someone shouted. "Hey."

The trio turned, with Harry and Gyles both reaching inside their jackets. They saw two men wearing hoodies with the hoods pulled up, both were holding pistols. They raised up.

"Oh shit," someone said.

Sansa did the one thing she absolutely should not have done, froze. The pain in her middle made her want to bend double, but a pair of strong hands grabbed her upper arms and hurled her down beside the sedan. Sansa pressed her hand over her stomach and felt the liquid against her hands. _Blood_ , she thought distantly, _and this was such a nice dress_. Harry popped his head up over the hood of the sedan and Sansa heard two loud gunshots. _He shouldn't be shooting out in the open, too many witnesses_.

He knelt back down and turned to her, his eyes widened as he focused on her stomach. "Come on Sansa, stay with me." He pressed his hands over hers, they were warm.

Even as her field of vision narrowed she heard more gunshots, they sounded distant. Her head dropped, she was so tired.

"Hey Sansa, stay awake for me." But she couldn't. _Just let me rest a while._ She closed her eyes as the world faded away to nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Would I do it? I felt I had to put you all through it, least you get the idea that I turned Sansa into billy badass.
> 
> As always, reviews and critiques are welcome.


	7. On Tap

It had taken two DEU detectives two days of poring over mugshots to determine that "D" was Donnel Haigh, another week to write the warrant and supporting affidavits for his pager. Then two hours for the Justice of the Peace to read all that paper and sign the warrant. Then Loras turned the pager on. The recorder was silent for two days. When it did go off Barristan was in his office reviewing his detective's run sheets.

"It's a ten-digit number. 2208544096."

Brienne, Loras and Barristan were soon gathered around the office speakerphone. Several other Detectives gathered around.

"What's happening?" Barristan asked.

"He's talking on the payphone again."

"Again?"

"He's always using that thing."

Barristan looked at Brienne. "We're going to need a DNR on that payphone."

"A DNR?" asked Podrick.

"Dialled Number Register, it records all calls made to and from a phone, the phone number of the caller on the other end of the line and the duration of the call," Brienne explained.

"What's happening now?" Barristan asked.

"He's just standing around," said the DEU detective.

Another fifteen minutes went by.

"Okay, we've got a taxi pulling up. Tag number EJR528."

"Follow it."

"On it." The call then consisted of what sounded like heavy breathing and footfalls, before the detective came back. They followed him through several kilometres of backstreets before the Detective said: "He's pulling up in an alley off Butcher Steet."

"Is anyone else there?" Barristan asked.

"Negative." Everyone in the room made expressions of defeat.

"He's picking up a bag. Could hold about two g-packs." Which was about 2,000 vials or 40,000 dragons worth of product.

"The week's stash," Brienne speculated.

"Probably," agreed Barristan.

"Do you want us to take him?" The detective asked.

"Negative, we do that we have to give up the cloned pager in the charging document and we lose the only lead we have. Just follow him back to his corner."

"10-4."

When they analysed the DNR from the payphone, they found that for the last three weeks D had been sending out a page – the number 515, probably an identifier – to another pager number. Fortunately, it only took another week for D to do three re-ups – 2,000 vials sold out in two to three days, not a week – and give them a pattern. The page back to D always came from a different pay phone and was always a different number, but always ten digits.

They typed out a warrant for the second pager. It rang every two to three hours, sometimes three digit pages – 504, 513, 515 – sometimes a four-digit number – 3428, 3436, 3479 – a couple of times were six digits – both with a 999 suffix so probably a call for muscle – sometimes ten. Some of those ten digit pages would show up on D's pager.

Then late on a Friday, and not six hours after D had picked up a re-up, D received ten-digit page without having sent out a 515 code. They'd followed him to a vacant lot, waiting were a couple of dozen guys that the Southside DEU boys knew well, all crew chiefs, and one guy the whole task force recognised, Lucas Blackwood, recently released on bail pending his appeal for wrongful conviction, as a result of Janos Slynt's cooked case. They'd met for ten minutes, then master Blackwood and his subordinates went their separate ways. The DEU detectives had followed Blackwood but lost him when he went down an alley and broke the box.

But even with all this, a bunch of meaningless pages could not prove a drug conspiracy; it probably wouldn't even make it past a preliminary hearing. It had been Podrick who had figured out what the ten digit numbers – the only ones that had been linked to drugs – meant. "So I was lying up last night, thinking about the pagers.

"You need a girl, kid. That'll put an end to that," put in one of the DEU sergeants.

Podrick went slightly red but otherwise continued as though no one had said anything. "So I came in here and started plotting them on a map, trying to find patterns.

"And?"

"I worked the Northeastern District; I didn't really know where some of the Southside addresses were, so I was putting them into the computer and in the map program, an address has a GPS coordinate next to it. And then it hit me."

Barristan understood where he was going. It was so obvious, once someone else pointed it out. "The numbers are the minutes and seconds on a GPS. Nice work."

"That still leaves two numbers," said Brienne.

"It's a decimal place after the seconds; it narrows the location down to 3x3m area," said Podrick.

"Alright that's all good, but all we've got is bullshit, no-ones handed drugs to anybody," said one of the DEU detectives

"They're concealing their identities by using the pagers, encoding information, and they possess an already-agreed-upon system of communication, all of that is valuable evidence."

"Of what?"

"Conspiracy."

"Conspiracy?"

"We're building something here Detective, we're building it from scratch. All the pieces matter. Let's try to find something on Blackwood, work your CIs." The day after he had learned of his people's attitude to what he considered basic police work Barristan had spent most of roll call chewing out the detectives, some had taken his advice and would be promoted into Narcotics when this was over, those who hadn't had earned places on Barristan's shit list.

"Are we following the Starks, the Tullys?"

"Didn't have a reason."

"We suspect them of involvement in a drug organisation and Brynden Tully has more bodies on him than a Sothoryosi mass grave. If we follow them, we'll find connections to the street.” He turned to Brienne. “Get on it.”

***

Around 4am on the fourth week after the first pager was cloned, Barristan's sleep was broken by his cell phone ringing.

"Selmy."

"Chief Inspector, Admin has Robb Stark as a target of an investigation you're running."

"Yes?"

"A Sansa Stark has just been logged as sustaining a gunshot wound outside the Smoking Log tavern." Robb Stark was going to be pissed.

"Is she dead?"

"No, sir."

"Thanks.” He called Brienne.

“What time is it?

Barristan checked his alarm clock. “4.06.”

“What happened?”

“Sansa Stark has been shot outside the Smoking Log. I want surveillance on all their known associates and the Smoking Log right now. I’ll alert the district commander and Violent Crime. Get the guys together."

“On it.”

***

"You know they're not going to tell us anything." It had been two days since the shooting outside the Smoking Log and six weeks since Tywin Lannister had been set on fire and shot six times. Sansa Stark had gone through six hours of surgery to repair a gunshot wound to the stomach and had been fully conscious for less than three hours. While Miss Stark's "friends" and the Smoking Log's "bouncers" (all licensed security officers, permitted to carry firearms, doubtless Catelyn Stark’s work) had killed one of the shooters, the other had managed to get away. The Mayor had declared that the KLCW was working tirelessly to find the perpetrators. The reality was somewhat different and Barristan knew, though couldn't prove, that the Lannisters were behind it.

"Yes."

"But we're going anyway?" Payne was right; the people of the King's Landing underworld always presented an impenetrable wall to all outsiders. Anyone who broke the wall of silence was a dog and worthy only of destruction. The Starks were not dogs.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"So we can walk past the cameras and say we did. The Watch looks like it’s on the ball and His Worship and the bosses are kept happy."

Sansa's room was on the second floor. There were guards in the second floor elevator bay, sipping coffee and concealing firearms beneath their jackets. There were more at the entrance to the ward and by the nurses' station. The end of the corridor outside Sansa's door was thick with them. Amongst them was one unhappy looking Watchman who had been redundantly assigned to guard the door.

One of the smaller ones, who had his jacket off and a bandage around his upper arm, and who Barristan recognised as Gyles Grafton from his arrest for discharging of a firearm within city limits two days earlier, stepped into their path. "I'm sorry sir but we can't let you go in."

"Excuse me?"

"Not unless you give up you weapons."

Barristan truly couldn't believe what he was hearing. "We're City Watchmen." Both men pulled out their warrant cards and shoved them in the little shit's face.

"You may have heard there are some corrupt Watchmen around."

Galbert Glover had heard the commotion and stepped into the hallway. "Kid, knock it off, this is Barristan goddam Selmy."

"So?"

"So, the day he takes one dirty penny is the day that I lose all faith in humanity."

"That's very kind of you Galbert," said Barristan.

"The sooner this farce is over the sooner we all can get some rest."

"Yeah."

“And forgive the kid, he’s not from around here and has not learned to properly respect the authorities.”

Gathered around the bed were Catelyn, Robb, Bran, Arya and Rickon Stark, as well as Brynden Tully, Galbert Glover, Greatjon Umber, and several people Barristan did not immediately recognise.

"Miss Stark, how's your stomach?"

"Healing, though I'm told there will be quite the scar, so no more bikinis."

"Yeah, I bet you'd look terrible in them," put in Podrick. Barristan was surprised. Despite Pod's willingness to ask questions, he remained largely quiet around new people, he'd never have made such a comment a month ago. Sansa let a small smile play across her lips.

"Well, why don't we get down to business?"

"Fine."

"Did you see who shot you?"

"A man with a gun."

***

Thirty wasted minutes later, Barristan walked back into the hospital’s foyer. As he and Podrick stepped out of the elevator, something occurred to him. There were too many people at Sansa’s room, too many unknown faces, sure the older guys were family friends, but that didn’t explain the younger men.He turned to Podrick. “When we get back to West Barracks, I want you to go through all the recordings for all of Robb Stark’s visitors at Crownlands and City jail.”

“What am I looking for?”

“Anything that might be code to coordinate the hits on Tywin and the others. We’ve been assuming that they were carried out on Robb Stark’s orders but that may not have been the case.”

Pod looked slightly confused, but nodded. “Yes, sir.”

Barristan walked into the sunshine. He was met with a barrage of questions. "Chief Inspector Selmy, are you any closer to arrest?”

"I can only say on behalf of the King's Landing City Watch that we are doing everything possible to solve these series of murders." He and Pod got into Barristan’s take-home car, even as the reporters found creative ways to call bullshit.

***

A week later Brienne, Loras and Barristan met to discuss the progress of the case before Barristan had to do his weekly briefing for COMPSTAT, a briefing that the Mayor, his Chief of Staff, the Chief Prosecutor and the Mayor's press secretary would be attending, in addition to the brass. "Any follow up on Sansa Stark's movements."

"Actually, yes." He went for a folder. "Gulltown and Sunspear both had nothing under her name, but Sunspear had her in their bad girls file, don't ask. They have her meeting with Oberyn Martell approximately 9 months ago. No more than a twenty-minute conversation and they shook hands afterwards. Brynden Tully was there, as were three other men, names currently unknown but we're looking through mug shots." He handed the photos to Barristan.

"We know these two men," he said, pointing out two of the men. "They were at Sansa Stark's room."

"Chiefs?"

"Muscle. They were the shooters at the bar fight."

“And so they were also her bodyguards long before she turned up back in King’s Landing, interesting. How many times did Sansa Stark visit her brother between his sentencing and his release?”

“I don’t know, but I can find out.”

“Ask Pod, I put him on reviewing recordings of Robb Stark’s visitations.

“Will do.”

“Did we get anything from the surveillance?”

"Catelyn has moved into a new place, second floor but it has a lift, Rickon seems to be staying in school more and he’s working out at a gym in Stokeworth. Sansa is still in hospital. Arya’s seeing this mechanic but seems to spend most of her nights at home. Robb’s also spending a lot of time at home with his wife and kid but Bran and Brynden are the most interesting.”

"How so?"

"They each have multiple cars, multiple license plates which seem to be clones albeit for the same model of car. Their counter-surveillance is excellent, we’re having as much success as we di with the money couriers"

"Well that's something at least." He turned back to Loras. "How's the wire progressing?"

"We have a line on the main stash."

"Oh?"

Loras pulled out a clip board. "We know that Blackwood receives a page from the crew chief whenever a supply runs low. And then he gets another page, probably from the main stash, which he then passes on to whoever is running low. The second page always comes from the same pay-phone, a pay-phone that's in a quiet middle-class neighbourhood."

Barristan flicked through to check. "You're thinking the main stash is nearby?"

"We think so. With your permission I'll put up three of the DEU boys on surveillance on the payphone. They'll follow him back to the stash. We get some PC and then bang out a warrant to search the place," said Loras.

"Absolutely not," said Barristan. He remembered that Tyrell had come up through Violent Crimes rather than Narcotics, there were times when it showed.

"We park a van down the street and follow the supply all over town," said Brienne.

Barristan nodded. "We can take the door any time we please and with that, the pagers and surveillance on meetings between the bosses and we've got ourselves a case. To which end, can we carry out an effective surveillance?"

"Trying to follow the crew and section bosses has given them a lot of practice; I'm getting a core of good people."

"Good. We'll need them."

"We have another problem," Brienne handed Barristan a clipboard; all the four number pagers were highlighted. "The pages I've highlighted in green, don't correspond to movements by any of the street level dealers."

"So you’re thinking these are for Blackwood’s meetings with his bosses?"

"Exactly."

"It's impressive," said Barristan.

"What?"

"The discipline of it."

"What do you mean?" Loras asked.

"They're conducting all their business face-to-face and we could never wiretap that, but even then they are still using codes to hide the meeting locations."

"Why not use the codes for all their meetings?"

"Please bear in mind Sergeant that those street-level dealers are products of the King's Landing school system."

"So are the bosses."

"True, but they learnt at the knee of people who went to school when this city wasn't screwed up."

Brienne and Loras looked at him in surprise. S _urely_ , their faces said, _such a time did not exist._

"Well, when it wasn't _as_ screwed up. So we've got another code, more evidence of conspiracy, but if we can't break it, we can't get surveillance.

"Like my old sergeant used to say, any code can be broken," said Brienne.

"Well,” Barristan said. “At least I’ll have something positive to say at the briefing.”

***

“Godsdammit Waters, did you just use the word responsibility to explain why you can’t get on top of this shit,” Alliser Thorne, the Lieutenant Commander for Operations said, or rather yelled. “Did you really just do that?”

“Sir, I-”

“I don’t think you know what the word means, as I look at the 24s and clearly see that some .38 calibre asshole is raping your district from the Blackwater all the way to the Kingsgate.” At this moment, Barristan was very pleased that it was Humfrey Waters, the Chief Inspector of the Western district, rather than himself standing at the podium. Though Barristan’s briefing, which had excluded the main stash, was probably at least partly responsible for the diatribe. “It’s police work like that which allows us to have five fucking homicides in a single fucking night people.” Clearly, Robb Stark had already stepped things up. “I mean for fucks sake, can’t any of you fucking kids bring this shit under control.”

Finally Bywater stepped in. “Gentlemen, the word has come down, the felony rate will fall by 5% in each district by the end of the year. In addition, we will hold the number of murders to 675 or less.” Clearly, Mace Tyrell thought he still had a chance of being re-elected, maybe the anti-corruption “purge” that IID had been carrying out (with a whole twenty people dismissed from their positions) had gained him some support. Nevertheless, 675 murders was a reduction of 57 from last year and that was before Robb Stark took his anger at his sister’s shooting out on the remnants of the Lannister organisation. How exactly he was supposed to make those bodies disappear, he didn’t yet know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As it turns out, I wouldn't.  
> For comparison, NY (8.4m) had 333 homicides, Baltimore (650k) had 196, and London (8.3m) had 82 in one of the years between 2010 and 2013 (Source: Wikipedia)  
> Reviews are always welcome.


	8. The Wrath of the Northmen

It was chaos in the Smoking Log. Luwin was on the phone with Beth and the Company’s criminal lawyers – all the guys except Gyles had been arrested due to breach of the peace and discharging a firearm within city limits. Gyles was in the hospital with a flesh wound that had torn through the outer bicep and tricep. No doubt he'd be arrested once that was done. It was petty harassment, Luwin had assured him, every one of the men selected to guard the gathering was licensed to carry, his mother's idea. Brynden was trying to organise his men with a few old cellphones. Robb walked over to him.

“What's our security out there?"

"We've got four guys on the roof and two each on the front and back doors. Another four guys with Sansa, your mother and her nine mil at the hospital. And another four guys out looking for this shooter who got away and any Lannister bastard stupid enough to be out on the street." Bryden paused, as if doing some mental math. "With the six guys at the station and Gyles, that's all our muscle."

"Not counting my guys, none are on parole."

"We should start by moving the families somewhere safe."

"Here?"

"You'd have to ask Kyra."

"Kyra?"

"It's her bar."

"Could you do that?"

"I'm a little busy."

"You're scared."

"You're not?"

Robb walked over to Kyra, who was at the door, having a conversation with a detective.

"Ma'am, we have every right to examine this bar, its a crime scene," the detective said.

"Its not a crime scene, the bullets didn't come through the wall." Kya replied.

"We'll decide where the crime scene is ma'am."

"No you will not and I can get a lawyer over here to back me up."

"We'll get a warramt and then we'll come back and charge you with obstruction of justice."

Kyra paused for a moment. "You can examine the front wall but unless you can show me a bullet that went through, you may not examine any other part of this building."

The detective sighed. "Fine." He walked off, presumably to get a tech.

Robb walked the final steps over to Kyra. "Hey."

"Thanks for your help."

"You seemed to have everything under control."

Kyra smiled. "What can I do for you?"

"I want to bring some people to stay here for a little while. You ok with that?"

"Will you pay?"

"Pay?"

"I have loans, bills, a mortgage. I can't just give you free booze, board and food for as long as you need it."

"I doubt there will be much drinking."

"As per usual Robb Stark, you are missing my point."

"We'll pay."

"There is a big room upstairs as your sister knows, but some will have to sleep in the bar, so I'd buy some stretchers if I were you."

Robb nodded and headed back to Brynden. "Get your guys to bring their families here. I'll tell mine." He started to walk away and then turned back. "What can we expect to find out from the investigation?"

"Most of our resources are focused on the Lannisters. I have a few guys who have reached out to me, but with all that's been going on..."

Robb turned to a group of men who were standing near the bar. "Wyman."

The portly man walked over. "Yeah."

I want you to work with Brynden, let's reconnect with our friends in the Watch and make some new ones. Tell them we'll play big cash for any information whatsoever."

"It's done."

Robb turned back to Brynden. "I want these Lannister bastards to pay."

"We'll hit back hard."

"No, I want them obliterated."

"The boss wanted us to only beat them until they fold."

"I think tonight's events make it pretty clear that they have not folded and I think if Sansa was here she’d agree with me."

"I'll tell the men not to make vacation plans."

"Not just the muscle, corner crews too."

"The boss didn't want us hitting the crews. It will only invite retaliation on our own people and someone has to sell our product once this is all over."

"This is war, we have to be cruel if we want to win and you know it." And there would always be more corner boys.

"I do."

"Get it done." He turned away, then stopped. "The boss?"

"She's in charge."

"I know that, I mean why not just Sansa."

"Good habits, otherwise I might screw up one day and use it where someone might hear. Never 'she' either."

"Noted. Let's get to work."

***

Sansa lay in her hospital bed. Gyles sat in a chair facing the door with his arm in a sling. Harry and Jory were standing outside. She hated this. Being all but helpless, unable to lift herself up off the bed without screaming in pain.

The door opened and Bran rolled in. "Hey big sis."

"Hey little brother."

"How are you doing?"

"Fantastic. I ran three miles today and then Gyles and I had a break dancing battle like a pair of Sothoryosi street hoods."

Bran turned to Gyles. "Could you give us a minute, please." Gyles got up and walked out.

Bran waited until Gyles had closed the door then turned back to Sansa. “So, you’re having a bit of a day.”

“I’m looking for a little emotional support and you’re going to make jokes.”

“You need to lighten up.”

“This isn’t funny.”

“I know it’s not. Of everyone, I know. And I think I’m wheeling proof that it’s not the coming of the Others.”

“You’re going to play the cripple card.”

“I think I’m entitled.”

“Yeah.” Sansa knew what was coming. And now she felt like a bitch for wallowing in self-pity when the evidence of how different things could have been was right in front of her.

“Of course, there is one big difference.”

“All I lost was muscle.”

“Yeah.”

“So I’m going to stop wallowing now.”

“Yes you are.”

They sat together for a while, Sansa turned her head back to Bran. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be making a big deal, especially when you’ve been through worse.”

“It’s okay. One of things I learned is that everyone’s entitled to scream every once in a while.”

“Including you?”

“I try to keep it to every other day.”

“You know if you ever need anything...”

“I know.”

“So, how are things at the office?”

“Uh-.”

“Don’t worry, the room was swept before you came in.”

“Busy. Everyone’s running around, going in different directions. There’re not enough people to cover everything that needs doing, plus our suppliers are nervous.”

“How so?”

“They worry our contracts are going to fall through.”

“Do we have enough-?”

“We have the income to make the payments. And we’re not seeing a drop off in contracts and everybody’s paying when they should.”

“I want those payments made, we don’t have enough credit with our suppliers to just tell them to wait.”

“We have the reserves for a good long while. We’re already looking for, uh, alternate sources just in case.”

"Don't do that unless you really think we can't pay. Our suppliers are the best and we can't afford to upset them, which they will be if they find out."

"I'll pass it along."

“Hmm. How’s Mum? I know she puts on a brave face.”

“She’s okay. She’s still at her own place. Meera and I usually have dinner with her, and Jeyne is picking her up before she takes the kids to school, which helps. In fact, they’re bringing her medication down again.”

Sansa smiled, the first good news she’d had in the week she’d been in bed. “Rickon?”

“He’s okay, I think Brynden set him up with a boxing trainer, and he’s always home for dinner. It helps that there’s room for both of them in their new apartment. So he can go off by himself when he needs it.”

“And Robb and Arya?

“He's fire and brimstone and she's right alongside him."

I'm touched."

"I'm sure, but something like a dozen of their guys have been dropped in the last week. Including a drive by corner crew"

Sansa sat for a minute. "He needs to slow down. The plan was that we beat on them a little and they fold. That hasn't worked, fine, we need to keep going but we won't survive the heat dozens of dead Lann- other guys that an all out war will bring."

"You want to stop? It's not like we can just yield the floor and go home."

"No but we also can't litter the streets. And when the other guys retaliate, we don't have the manpowr to protect all our crews, so they'll stay home and we'll lose our money flow. Not to mention, it will bring the eyes of the whole world down upon us. The idea is to make the investigations go away not to increase their strength. We need to find a way to win without destroying ourselves in the process."

"I'll pass it along."

***

Arya lay in wait, fingering the silenced pistol in her pocket. It had been ridiculously easy to sneak out of her apartment without the Watchmen seeing her and she’d had a lot of practice the last few weeks to re-polish the skills she’d learnt living on the streets. The taxi surveillance team had found a pair of Lannister soldiers patrolling the streets of the Westside. Currently, the two men were only half a block away and on foot. The mask was itchy but she didn't dare to lift it up. The Westside had a particularly high density of domain awareness cameras and one second of footage would be enough to end her life.

The Lannister soldiers passed the doorway she was hiding in and Arya stepped out of the shadows and followed them. They were headed towards a surveillance blindspot, helpfully identified by one of Wyman's new sources in the Watch.

The moment the three walked into the surveillance blind spot Arya drew the pistol and shot both men in the back of the head.

She guessed she should feel bad about what she had done. But she didn't, these men were the enemy. They'd chosen this life and they knew the risks. They were also the same crew who hurt Arya's pack.

As they fell, a sedan with cloned plates screeched up beside them. Three guys, one of the Dornish, Smalljon Umber, and Karstark, jumped out and went over to the dead guys. The Dornish and Smalljon grabbed the bigger guy and Arya helped Karstark lug the smaller one into the boot of the sedan. Then Karstark grabbed a bucket of bleachy water from the passenger footwell and splashed it over the blood that was on the ground, washing most of into the gutter. Then all four got into the car. They drove over to Southside, making only one stop to dump the gun into a stormdrain. They headed deep into the Kingswood. When they stopped, they carried the bodies ten metres into the trees. There they found the two-metre deep hole they had dug earlier in the evening and then covered with plywood sheets. They dropped the bodies in the hole and then took turns filling the dirt back in. Even that was hard work and they were all sweating when they lay the sod back down. The new orders to disappear the bodies of the Lannisters may have made sense, but it was also hard work.

They drove the sedan back out into Southside and parked it on the street, they left the doors open and the keys in the ignition, put the original plates back on and then got into another car that was waiting for them. It was just past three am.

***

Sansa was sitting in a wheelchair. Three weeks stuck in a hospital bed, another two in the rehab ward to build up enough muscle that she could be trusted to walk around Robb’s house – where she’d be staying until she recovered – and they stuck her back in a wheelchair. This time she decided to keep her frustration in.

Then she saw the SUV, or more precisely, the three SUVs. She turned the Robb. "What the hell is this?"

"You've my sister, I love you, and for your sake and Mum's, I want to make sure that you're protected."

"By making it obvious to all and sundry that I'm not just some dumb courier."

"The Lannisters seem to have already figured that out, and it won't be long before the Watch does."

"I don't know, I mean with you being so subtle about it, they'll probably never figure it out."

"I meant that they're pulling footage for my visitations and my visitor logs, it won't be long before they see that you only came to see me once. Now get in the car."

Sansa hauled herself in. Robb jumped in beside and Brynden took the front passenger seat. "How do we know this?"

"Wyman has a guy in the Bureau of Prisons."

"Fine. Does he have anyone in the Task Force Veleryion?"

"Viserion and no, but Luwin has some sources in the courthouse who he is starting to feel out again, rather than waiting for them to come to him."

"Good. How're your kids?"

"Well..."

***

Robb had a very nice house, Sansa admitted, purchased entirely from the proceeds of his settlement.

She walked in the front door, and was greeted by nearly two dozen faces. She spent nearly an hour with her mother and then two more hours talking with everyone else who had come to welcome her home. Then there was dinner, and dessert, and coffee. It was after nine before she was led down to the basement.

"Gentle - not really appropriate I suppose." That got a laugh. "Guys. Thank you all for what you've done the past few weeks. Especially cooling it down. I know it wasn’t something you wanted, but it was something we all needed. And I appreciate that you respected my decision."

Brynden smiled. "So, what's the next move boss?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reviews and constructive criticism are always welcome.


	9. Understanding

They'd found the stash house fairly easily, it had been Larence Snow sending out the pages and one of the DEU detectives had followed him back to a house that had a makeshift sally port, covered windows and cameras watching the entire perimeter. On trash day, they'd found enough drug paraphernalia to write up a warrant.

Unfortunately, the house was in a development of twelve houses, which branched off a right of way, and the front door of the stash house was obscured from the entrance of the development by another house, and parking in the development was heavily enforced, so they couldn’t put a van outside even if they wanted to. When he received the news, Barristan just sighed, nothing on this case was easy.

As it turned out, it was a simple matter to place a camera in a row of trees facing the stash house and follow cars were parked in a side street; watching and following the dozens of couriers came and went every day. The task force had also started writing warrants on the pager numbers from people who received pages from Snow. But they still hadn't broken the four digit code or followed one of the street bosses back to a meeting with the higher ups.

Meanwhile Loras’s team remained busy, in addition to the dozen bodies dropped in the fortnight after Sansa had been shot, more than a dozen corners, both Lannister and Stark, had been shot up in drive-bys, resulting mostly woundings of corner boys, though one vigilant crew had dispatched a Stark shooter; miraculously, no civilians had been caught in the crossfire.

The yelling from Thorne had gotten progressively louder. Waters and another district commander had been relieved of their duties on the grounds of gross incompetence. Barristan had feared for his own job and thanked his lucky stars that he had passed the thirty-year mark and received a pension bump shortly before the Great Lion had gone up in flames.

Then the killing had died down, no more corners being shot up, no more corpses left to be found. People just started disappearing, Loras had had even more difficulty with that one, there were no more floaters, no more Jon Does, no spike in dead bodies outside KL. Barristan had recalled Jon Arryn's supposed habit of disposing of bodies in Blackwater bay and Loras had pulled all the video he could find, and found nothing suspicious. Surveillance on those docks without cameras had turned up nothing but some over fishing. Barristan suspected there might be a few new burials in the Kingswood, but the place was more than two hundred hectares. His request to search it had been denied.

***

"Good morning Brynden."

"Good morning sir." The weekly meetings between the Commander and the city's chief homicide detective had replaced the weekly briefings before the brass and the politicians in the third month of the investigation.

"Anything new to report."

"We have a confirmed location for the main stash."

"That's good, when can we expect a raid?"

"The feeling is that we need to wait until we can connect the drugs to the main players. It's probably the best way to bring a conviction against those responsible for the Saturday Night Massacre."

"That's all well and good, but its been nearly four months and we haven't made an arrest. Why aren't you focusing more on the murders?"

"Simply put, there is nothing there. The firearms were brought everywhere from Molestown to Sunspear through cleanskins, the tiremarks and footprints aren't specific enough to give a match, there are no fingerprints or DNA, and our only witness has disappeared into thin air. The only way to get them is the drugs."

"Assuming that the shooters and the dealers are the same people."

"A logical inference given the speed with which this new network was set up."

"I don't disagree with you Barristan, but the mayor wants this solved and we need to solve it, it was too blatant to go unanswered."

"I agree completely sir, we could go now but we don't have anything concrete on the top bosses."

"The case has to be rock solid, we can't afford to swing and miss." Yeah that would mean the Mayor would put your head on the chopping block first, Barristan thought uncharitably.

"I understand completely, sir."

***

Barristan was sitting before the two white boards that now held a large collection of photographs and documents, covering the case against the apparently resurgent Stark organisation. Dozens of photos of stash houses, couriers, corner boys, even a few lieutenants. But nothing about the bosses. In fact, the position of the head of the organisation was simply a question mark inside a square. Sansa Stark’s picture was on one side amongst the gang’s associates.

He turned to Loras. “What do you have on Robb Stark’s visitors?”

“The handsome Jon Snow, Robb’s cousin, currently a Sergeant in His Majesty’s Armed Forces, Special Air Service, no less, visited him every six months or so. The brothers Stark visited every month or so, along with a Meera Reed, the daughter of Ned Stark’s late bodyguard and driver Howland. Neither the brothers nor Snow exchanged any shoptalk. Mrs Stark, nee Westerling visited him once a week with their kid and Marcus Luwin visited a few times, we don’t have any recordings of them. His mother never visited –“

“Harsh.”

“Total mental collapse, I think it’s forgivable.”

“True.”

“And his sister Sansa visited him exactly once.”

“What?”

“Two weeks _after_ Tywin came down with a sudden and regrettable case of being set on fire and shot six times.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong but I thought our big theory was that Stark organised this from inside.”

“Maybe he used his wife as a go between.”

“And leave his kid an orphan, no. Besides, using Jeyne for the prison and the Sansa for the outside is too complicated. We’ve been coming at this wrong.”

“So what?”

“Sansa Stark meets with the Arryns, the Martells, she pops up right after Tywin dies.” He turned to the screen grab from the video of Tywin’s death. “And the person who shot Tywin was of slight build.”

“You really think?”

“I do.” Barristan took Sansa’s picture from one side and placed it at the top of the Stark organisation chart. “Brienne was right.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reviews and constructive criticism are always welcome.


	10. Changing Up

It had been six weeks since Sansa had been released from Hospital and five months since Tywin Lannister had died. Five months of bloodshed. Five months of the Watch gradually tightening the screws on all of them, more raids, more arrests of low level dealers. Slowly, they had killed off the Lannister muscle, trading lives in the hope that they would emerge victorious.

Now Kevan Lannister wanted to meet. The house was on the corner of Reardon and Bryant. Sansa didn't like meeting indoors. This, she reflected, was somewhat crazy considering she would set foot in the place exactly once. Besides, winter was coming, and KL winters could be extremely unpleasant. Her SUV – which Brynden and Robb had insisted be fitted with ballistic armour and run-flat tyres, despite her objections and that driving a vehicle with those customisations were punishable by ten years in prison.

From down the street Sansa watched as two more SUVs parked outside the building, each disgorged five Stark men. Four took up positions at the building's corners, four more carried out a search of the buildings that overlooked the corner and the remaining two checked the building itself. Only once they had come back out again did Gyles pull the SUV out of its parking space and drive down the street.

Sansa, Brynden and her three bodyguards exited the vehicle while Gyles, whose flesh wound to the arm was only just healing from the post-injury infection, left the engine running, ready to move should everything go sideways. Sansa, Harry and Brynden walked into the building and Harry took up a post just outside the back room, where Kevan Lannister was waiting. Brynden immediately began to run his detector wand over the walls, roof and floor.

"Your people don't cut corners when it comes to security," Kevan said.

"It probably has some to do with the time I got shot and died," Sansa replied.

"Died?"

"For a minute and a half." It wasn't true, her heart had never actually stopped beating in the day she’d been unconscious, but it did make for a hell of a story.

"I hadn't heard."

"You sound disappointed."

"I am."

"Well, I appreciate your honesty. Not, you know, much, but I do appreciate it. Now, you're the one who called this meeting."

"I'm retiring." Sansa raised her eyebrows. "I have a wife, children and a lot of money. I didn't get into this game so my name could ring out on some Westside street corner."

 _"Not to mention that half your muscle is dead and the other half are jumping like rats from a sinking ship,"_ she thought. "The ability to take your ego out of the equation is a rare trait in our world," she said.

Kevan nodded. "I understand why you did what you did, he killed your father you killed him, fair is fair." He paused. "Although by that logic I should kill you."

Brynden went for his pistol but Sansa waved him down. "You are welcome to try."

"I already did." Her scar was itching, but it did that a lot. Apparently, it was a sign that the thing was healing.

"How are Cersei and Tyrion taking this?"

"Cersei's not taking it well, but she has to face the same reality as I do. As for Tyrion, I haven't heard from him in a good long while and I doubt he would care if he did know."

"Does Cersei accept reality?"

"That remains to be seen."

"In any case, there's no reason to draw this out. I wanted to tell you myself."

Sansa extended her hand. "I appreciate this, and I respect that you played to win."

Kevan shook. "I wish you good luck, I hear you have a whole Task Force after you." He sounded less than in awe of that fact; given how many times Narcotics had gone after the Lannisters, it was understandable.

"Oh I'm flattered, I assure you. Stay healthy."

"I intend to."

Sansa, Brynden and Harry exited the building out one side while Kevan left via another. Harry couldn't stop grinning, clearly he'd heard everything that had taken place.

Brynden spoke for the first time. "I'll send our people out there tomorrow."

"Agreed, we don't need any nonsense over this."

"You know you'll never be able to let your guard down?"

"I was never going to be able to let it down anyway."

***

The next meeting of the day was with Luwin. The other two SUVs worth of bodyguards had gone off to take care of business. All she had was four bodyguards and four sets of cloned plates – arranged by her mother – in the boot. She entered the building through the underground parking lot and ascended three flights of stairs to get to Luwin's office, while Harry and Jory took up positions in the building's lobby. Luwin's secretary, Beth Cassel, showed Brynden and Sansa straight in. Luwin stood to greet them and Sansa took a seat while Brynden waved his detector wand around.

"He knows everything we say here is protected," said Luwin, looking at Sansa.

"Unless they have extrinsic evidence of a criminal conspiracy," replied Brynden.

"If they had a wire up on me I would know."

"I know that, but I've found it's just better to indulge him on this sort of thing." Sansa said, raising her hands. Brynden finished his sweep and then left. "So?"

"Three matters. First, my subcontractor has completed the work for Bran, seeing as you'll likely see him before me." The last few weeks Bran had been preparing to bring their money back to Westeros. It was technical but she trusted Bran and Luwin to do it right. She flicked through the documents quickly, then put them in her hand bag.

"Second, I think we should start looking at political contributions."

"City races?"

"All levels."

"As of this morning that won't be an issue."

"Oh?"

"Kevan folded."

"I'm surprised."

"I know." She saw the look on his face. "And I know."

"Hmm."

"So you're thinking a Super PAC?"

"A 501(c)(iv). Spending is unlimited but they don't have to reveal their donors, ever."

A wry smile passed her lips. "Maybe we should hire a lobbyist."

"I can do one better, someone I used to know at the Citadel." Clearly he'd already considered this.

"Knew?"

"Her word carries a lot of weight, even though she doesn't hold office," he said, sidestepping the question.

"Well don't keep me in suspense."

"The Liberal party chairwoman."

"Olenna Tyrell, isn't she related to the Mayor?"

"A distant cousin, twice removed, or some such. The Liberals would like very much to have a majority in the Common Council so they can reform the world, but for that they need money and Olenna has never been burdened by anything resembling scruples. Not to mention that, unlike her conservative counterpart, her head is in the game, not up her arse."

"Well, I'll leave that in your capable hands. What's the third thing?"

"You're being tapped."

Sansa sat bolt upright. "How is that not the first thing?"

"It is only a few pagers, and I wanted to get through the other things first before you went into warrior princess mode." He handed her what seemed to be a full ream of paper. "I marked the PC."

She flicked quickly to the highlighted section. "Source of information?"

"The second affidavit." More reading revealed that some idiot had written the number on the stash house wall, which had then been found during a raid. Southside. Donnel Haigh.

"I'll deal with it."

"Anything those pagers have touched has to be considered infected."

"That might include your number."

"I use a disposable cell to page you."

"Change it."

"Already done. They also have a DNR on the good Mr Haigh's pay phone but they haven't broken the map code yet."

"How do you know?"

"Wyman's not the only one with sources, it'll be in the next invoice."

"As what?"

"Opinion preparation." He indicated the warrants. "You can read that here, but I'd prefer if you left them with me." She gave Luwin a questioning look. "Violation of warrant secrecy carries a sentence of 14 years." Sansa nodded.

“Is there any way to get them out from under this?”

“No.”

“I mean any way, Marcus.”   

“Barristan is not Slynt, he put together a good case, there won’t be any holes and the case is based on surveillance and wiretaps, no witnesses who might change their mind when asked to give sworn testimony.”

“And can we prevail upon the leaders of our fair city by the river to cut them some slack.”

“I know your father always said that his people weren’t a thing to be sacrificed but there isn’t anything to be done, Mace and Renly need this arrest if they’re going to survive. There’ll be a big press conference as soon as the arrests are made

Sansa spent an hour reading over the affidavits and another hour strategizing with Brynden. Now that the war with the Lannisters was over, the Martells would want their remaining men back, and she wanted more time to focus on the big picture, and make it harder for the Watch, not to mention keep her people occupied. Changes would have to be made.

***

The day's final meeting took place in a vacant lot in Stokeworth. Once again the meet was heavily guarded, not only by muscle – which had been growing even as the Lannister ranks thinned out – spread out for a block around, but also by coded messages in the pagers. The meeting code was a reference to the King's Landing map book, with the numbers corresponding to map page and grid square and then further encoded by jumping the five button on a phone key pad. The Company’s five section chiefs – Lucas Blackwood, Marq Piper, Wendel Manderlay, Smalljon Umber and Cley Cerwyn – as well as Larence, Bran, Harry, Gyles, Edmure, and Robb were present.

Sansa turned to Lucas first. "Give me your pager."

"What?"

"Your pager, give it to me, now." He handed it over. Sansa pulled out her pistol and used the butt to smash the pager into pieces.

"What the hell?"

"You're being tapped."

"What?"

"Your pager has been cloned and the narcos are receiving any page you receive."

"How?"

"Donnel uses the same payphone every time he sends you a page."

"The boy needs reminding of his manners," said Robb.

"Which Lucas will see to, tonight."

"Shit," said Larence. "Shit. Shit. Shit."

"What?"

"I send pages to Lucas."

"You've sent pages to all of us." A couple of times he'd even sent one to her.

"So there aren't a lot of pay phones near the stash house."

Sansa's earlier horror returned tenfold. "You used the same one?" If they had the payphone then they had pagers numbers for everybody, if those pagers were found on anyone, well, they'd all be taking an extended stay at Crownlands Penitentiary.

"Yeah."

"Move the stash tonight."

"I will, and I'm sorry."

"Everyone makes mistakes," she reassured him. "Just fix it."

She turned back to the group generally. "So, these are new pagers for everyone. Red bands are for calls between the twelve of us here, yellow bands are calls between us and other people in the Company, green bands are for everyone else. Make sure your people understand the difference." She thought for a moment. "And Larence, we're going to buy you a satellite phone to send out the pages for re-ups."

"That's beyond careful Sansa," said Larence.

"If they had taken the door on the main stash this morning, we'd all be going to prison for the rest of our lives." Larence nodded in defeat.

"How much else is compromised?" Robb asked.

"Not much, my source says that they only have warrants on Donnel, the Stash and Lucas's pagers, and a DNR on Donnel's phone. The good news is that they haven't broken the code for these meetings yet." Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

"That's the only piece of good news you want to share?" Harry had a wry smile on his face.

"What does he mean?" Edmure asked.

Sansa gave Harry what she had intended to be a withering look, but it soon broke into a smile. "Kevan folded this morning. Drinks at the Smoking Log on Friday." That brought smiles all around. "To which end, Edmure I'm putting you in charge of everything south of Bryant on the Westside, Gyles you're in charge of everything north.

"Then who's in charge of your detail?"

"Harry." Harry and Gyles exchanged a look. "Robb, you've got KL."

"All of it?"

"And anything else you intend to take, but don't make too much noise and don't start anything with the Martells or the Hightowers."

"Where does that leave you?"

"The connect, and new markets."

"New markets?"

"Business is business, and business must grow."

"You're using the Lorax as business advice?"

Sansa shrugged. "It seemed appropriate." Robb smirked.

"You really think we want that kind of profile. Those RCS boys dogged Jon Arryn for years"

"Who said anything about profile, I'm talking about buying for one and selling for two. Those Gulltown boys will need a steady supply once they stop fighting."

"And if they don't stop fighting?"

"Then we'll have to reason with them."

"So, do we have to wait to Friday to celebrate?"

"Absolutely not."

***

Six hours later, Sansa arrived at her apartment, one of three she owned. Like her car, the door and windows were armoured, and there was a security bar on the door, an escape tunnel hidden behind the back of a closet, a shotgun in a cupboard next to the door, and a pistol in a holster attached to the back of the bedside table.

Harry followed her up the corridor to her front door. "Goodnight Sansa."

"Goodnight Harry."

For some reason, they stood outside the  doorfor a moment before Harry spoke. "You're a hell of a woman."

"Thank you." She smild, the guys were altogether a good bunch, for a group of drug dealing murderers, but they could be crude.

"I meant it." Sansa noticed the way his eyes kept falling to her lips and she understood what the look he'd shared with Gyles had meant.

"I know, and I will admit, my opinion of you has improved considerably since the day we met on Lysa Arryn's doorstep, and I'm sure it would be fun, but I can't have a relationship with someone I work with. The guys wouldn't respect me anymore and I do not want that.

"I understand." He was hurt, and not in the way horny men were when she shot them down.

"If you didn't work for me, I'd have you in a heartbeat."

He smirked. "So, you want me to quit my job."

Sansa laughed. "Goodnight Harry."

"Goodnight Sansa."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reviews and constructive criticism are always welcome.


	11. The Path of the Righteous Man

Progress was being made. They may not have had the main meetings, but it was becoming clear that the Starks had pushed out the Lannisters and they had plenty of suspicious behaviour. Once they had the pagers, it would be clear that there was a conspiracy. Hey could use Blackwood and the stash house to prove it was drugs and that would be that. It wasn't a wire on the main meeting, but it would hopefully be enough to charge. Barristan had decided that it was time to go to the Chief Prosecutor and ask for the warrants.

Then one day, a wall had come up. It began when D received an unexpected page. The surveillance team got into position with an efficiency Barristan had come to expect. Again, the rest of the task force gathered around the speakerphone.

"We've got all the crew chiefs and Blackwood. Ohhh."

"What?" Barristan asked.

"Haigh's getting beat." And, as the video of the meeting later revealed, Blackwood had let fly a string of insults that called into question Haigh's ancestry, intelligence, sexual orientation and masculinity at high volume. Impressively, he didn't repeat himself once over the five-minute diatribe.

"Oh goddammit," said the DEU detective.

"What?

"The crew chiefs are handing in their pagers."

"Oh no." All those weeks of work gone, sure they had Blackwood and the Southside crew chiefs, maybe Snow if they moved fast, and maybe someone would roll up the ladder, but if these guys were dumping pagers then it was a safe bet that the others would be as well. He turned to Loras. "Write the warrant for the main stash. Now."

It took three detectives all night to write the affidavits and the warrant, and then for the Royal Prosecutor and a judge to approve it. The Task Force raided the main stash at ten the next morning. The cameras were still in place, and it took five minutes for tactical to get through the sally port, but inside they found nothing. There were no drugs and while the walls between the three bedrooms had been pulled down without building consent, the room itself was spotless. Forensic Support went over the house for six hours and found no cocaine or heroin residue.

They arrested Larence Snow, Lucas Blackwood, Donnel Haigh and the other crew chiefs the next day and were met with another impenetrable wall of no comment.

***

Three months of surveillance since the wall came up. They'd managed to get a few new pager numbers, but they didn't lead anywhere above the street amd never lasted more than a week. They never had any warning that a crew chief was going to a meeting, and now there were lookouts who hollered '5-0' the moment any of his men got close.

The pressure was still on to solve the case, in fact there had been a few veiled threats to bring in someone else if he couldn't deliver soon. Much good that would do, they'd blown their best chance by waiting too long. If he was honest he was angry at himself most of all, he should have pressed harder to lay charges sooner. It was in the past, but it still rankled.

If bottom up wasn't going to work, then they needed to try top down, and a top down attack meant following the money. It was hard work and it wasn't the way things were down but the last six months, as the detail ran into dead end after dead end, Barristan became frustrated enough that he was prepared to do anything to bring this case in.

He gathered Loras, Podrick, and Cuy around a table in the bullpen. "Brave new world for you boys." The three men looked confused. We are going to follow the money. We'll come at it a few ways. Payne you're going to look up the Corporate Charter Office, search the names of every one of our targets. Each result will contain a pdf. Write down every name you see, shareholders, directors, corporate officers but especially the lawyer who filed the paperwork. Run those names through the search engine and look for connections."

He turned to Cuy. "Emmon, you're going to do the same with the Land Register. Find out who sold the land, if it's been on sold, who bought it. You also take the companies that Pod finds and the two of you look for connections."

"This is like a scavenger hunt." Pod had taken to paperwork like a fish to water over the last few months.

"Yeah."

"So, while they're running around on that what do I do?" Loras asked.

"You're going to go down to the Electoral Commission, pull all the quarterly reports and individual donor lists for the last year. Some gangs like to run their money through PACS and the like." It went unspoken the Loras had to keep it quiet.

"And what are you going to do?"

"Review your office reports. You all cannot spell to save your own lives."

"Would we be in the Watch if we could?" Cuy said.

***

A week later Barristan and Cortnay Penrose, the Deputy Chief Prosecutor for Narcotics, met with Luwin at his offices.

Penrose opened with a strong play. "Your boys are looking at a lot of hard time, do you really think that they're all going to stand tall looking at a decade inside."

Luwin seemed confident when he made his reply. "Let's not forget that we're dealing with a King's Landing jury here. We can spend the next few weeks or months trawling our way through a bunch of pager codes and photographs and you might be able to scrape a few convictions out of it. Or not. But there'll be a lot of profile, at a time when the Mayor's approval rating is below 40%."

"You forget that we have a lot of bodies and a lot of drugs."

"None of which you can directly link to Mr Blackwood or Mr Snow. Let's be honest, your chances of conviction are low and by the time we make it to trial it'll be an election year. Or we could make a deal. Blackwood and Snow plead to one count of conspiracy and takes two years. Those with no priors take four years, those with one prior take six years, those with two or more take eight."

Penrose sighed, "Five years for Snow and Blackwood."

"Three."

***

Two weeks later Loras and Barristan were standing in front of a new cork board, now covered with pictures and index cards detailing a web of properties and companies spread over King's Landing and beyond.

"What have we got?"

"Something beautiful."

"Explain."

"We've found four companies buying up a whole lot of property, vacant houses mostly, some store fronts. They were all incorporated by lawyers at Luwin and Associates. The shareholders, directors and listed officers are all fronts, we think, no relatives.

"Well, why put your people on the paperwork when you can just kill anyone who doesn't do what you want."

"Yeah, so the only links, besides the lawyer, are a construction company, Stark Construction, the shareholders of which are Robb, Sansa, Bran, Arya, Rickon and Catelyn Stark."

"What?"

"Ned Stark left them some money to his kids and wife that the city didn't confiscate; they used that money and Robb Stark's settlement with the city to start the construction company. The other link is the King's Landing subsidiary of Canal Lending Corporation, a Braavosi finance company, which provides low interest loans to finance the acquisition and development of the properties."

"They need local bank accounts, so pull the Treasury paperwork."

"I put Cuy on it. Turns out the money came from deposits from the Canals Bank, recently incorporated in Braavos, the Lending Corp is a subsidiary. I'm sure we could write a subpoena but Braavos isn't known for the transparency of its banking system."

Barristan needed a minute to process that. They'd have to find another way. "So, what happens next?"

"The owning corp. sells the properties to a 501(c)(3) which then purportedly use them as rent-free housing for low-income families."

"You check that out?"

"Most of the houses are now occupied, I ran a check on a few people, and all made less than 30,000 dragons last year. The secretary-treasurer of the 501(c)(3) is another front and according to its tax returns, all the donations were for less than 500 dragons, which puts them below the reporting requirements."

"How are they able to own what looks to be about a hundred properties on donations of less than 500 dragons?"

"I haven't asked yet. Though if 10,000 people give 500 dragons, that's 5,000,000."

"And the political contributions?"

"Almost half a million to city candidates from listed officers alone in the last quarter. Including some from the Starks.”

"Quarter?"

"We haven't had time to go further back. Also, Marcus Luwin set up a 501(c)(4) – The Policy Centre for Progress. The returns were in the donor lists. It gave 10 million donations to Liberal Party Super PACs in the last six months."

"Fuck me. And we can't even ask them where the money comes from. You remember what I said."

"Chain of command, I'm not going to tell anybody. But that doesn't mean that they don't already know, there's bound to be someone at the Election Commission that is beholden to the machine." Barristan looked at Loras. "What? You spend enough time around my family you learn how the world works. The machine has people in every city department."

"Alright, call the Chief Prosecutor, we may be able to make this into a money laundering case with the right warrants. Good work."

"Well, it was Payne who did most of the work. The kid's thorough."

"Hound on the scent?"

"I was going to go with dog with a bone, but your metaphor works too."

***

Three days after Loras and Podrick had discovered the political contributions, and the day before his meeting with the Chief Prosecutor, Barristan was called into Jacelyn Bywater's office.

"I'm sorry, Barristan."

"You're shutting us down." It wasn't a question.

"The case is being suspended, pending future developments, due to resource considerations. At some point we have to start prioritising cases that will have an effect on street crime."

"I am days away from a case that will reduce the drug supply into this city by 80%."

"Money laundering, we both know how hard that is to prove, and you don't have the evidence to back it up."

"I will once I have the warrants and explain to me how we come up on 47 dead bodies. Explain that to me." Nineteen from the Saturday Night Massacre, and the rest from the war between the Starks and Lannisters. That was only the confirmed ones of course; more than a dozen others had disappeared into thin air.

"The case is old news. You’ve put thousands of man hours into it and all you’ve gotten are some two-bit drug arrests and hope."

"So, it has nothing to do with the ten million the Starks gave to Liberal Party Super PACs?"

Bywater leaned forward. "You are coming very close to insubordination Barristan. Your case is going nowhere and the officers you're using are desperately needed to do productive police work. At some point I have to pull the plug. Do you understand?"

Barristan was fuming internally. This was a case that should be worked. Instead he'd gotten a bunch of halfwit DEU cowboys and four of his own detectives. And now the bosses were pulling the plug-in order to get re-elected.

"Do you understand?"

"Yes, I understand. Resource decision, priorities." Even as he said the words, something snapped inside Barristan. Thirty years he'd worked his way up the ladder with hard work and a submissive personality. But the decision to come down on thirty-eight dead bodies changed something for him. Maybe it just showed him how far things had fallen. He got up, saluted, and walked out of the office. He wasn’t going to stop.

***

It took Barristan, Podrick and Brienne six weeks of investigation in their off-hours. It wasn't so much that Barristan didn't trust Loras, it was just that it was better not to lead him into temptation, especially now that the limits of the Commander's patronage had been revealed. They already had all the paper work, so it was simply a matter of putting the pieces together. Now Barristan was in a parking lot in Riverside at 11pm, waiting.

Another car pulled up beside his passenger side. The window rolled down, revealing Waymar Royce, an aide to the Conservative chairman of the Justice Committee of the Common Council, the elected lower house of the Grand Council – the Realm's legislature. A man with a lot to lose if the Liberals kept up their drug money funded attack ads and won a majority.

"I can tell you were never in Patrol."

Waymar looked confused. "What?"

"You need to drive around so that your driver's side and my driver's side face each other. It makes it easier to talk and hand things to one another."

"Right." Royce drove around. Barristan waited until Royce was away before sighing and shaking his head, he needed the kid, or more precisely his boss, too much to tell him he didn't know his arse from his elbow as far as police work was concerned.

"What can I do for you, Chief Inspector?" As if the kid was the source of all earthly power. What was it that man on TV had said 'proximity to power deludes some into believing they wield it'?

"I was working a case that my bosses shut down and I'm too close to quit."

"Which case?"

"The Saturday night massacre."

"They shut that down? Barristan nodded. "Gods. Why?"

Barristan handed a folder to the man. "Officially, due to the need to appropriately apply resources, but unofficially it was because we followed the money."

"Well, that was stupid." So, maybe the kid wasn't a total idiot. Maybe.

"Yeah. We uncovered a 10 million dragon donation to the Liberal Party from our target."

"And you think that this money was a bribe?"

"I doubt there was ever such an explicit agreement."

"You have proof?"

"The documents are all in the file. Your boss calls me before his committee, I won't lie."

"And your ass will be covered because you can't obstruct justice. You know for a man with a reputation for not playing the political game you're pretty good at it.”

"There's a big difference between playing the game and doing my job while not pissing anybody off."

"Is there?"

"There is to me."

"So what's your end in all this?"

"My end?"

"Everybody has an end, the thing they want in a deal. I mean I get that corrupt politicians probably aren't your thing but I don't think you're doing this just to take out one corrupt bastard."

"If you read the file, you'll see that the Super PACs weren't just supporting the KL ticket, you've got spending in a lot of marginal constituencies up and down the country. This goes a lot higher than Mace Tyrell. But my end, as you put it, is that I get to work the Starks, for as long as I need to, as hard as I need to, no matter where it goes."

"I'll take this back to the chairman."

"That's all I expected."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reviews and constructive criticism are always welcome.


	12. Worn Down

“They’ve stopped taking pictures?” Sansa, Robb, Bran and Arya were standing in Robb’s backyard. A backyard – together with a house and furnishings, including a spa pool – that had been paid for with money from the settlement the city had made with Robb and the other plaintiffs just to avoid the embarrassment of a trial.

“No one’s felt anything in a while. There’s no cars showing up regularly near the stash, and the DEU boys are up to their usual hijinks,” said Robb.

“There wasn’t anybody trying to watch the section meetings for the last couple of weeks,” said Arya. Robb had put Arya in charge of a team to provide security for the meetings between section and crew chiefs. Having Lucas and Larence in jail was bad enough, though Luwin expected them to be paroled at the first opportunity, both had been behaving themselves and attending lots of classes. Their families had been taken care of and both had stayed loyal, there would be work for them when they got out.

“That tallies with Luwin’s sources. Apparently, our 10 million dragon donation did the trick.”

“We can afford that?” Arya asked.

Bran answered. “The Company cleared more than 750 million last year, and the family got about 400, with the rest going to points on the package and non-distribution expenditure, like the donations.”

“By the mother,” said Arya. “Where does it all go?”

“Braavos, then back into Stark Construction and the various other businesses” Bran turned to Sansa. “Which reminds me, I’m looking at investing some of the money – property, shares, things like that.”

“Approved,” said Sansa. She’d long since learned to trust her brother when it came to matters of finance. _Much like Jon Arryn trusted Petyr Baelish_ , a small suspicious part of her mind whispered. Though there wasn't anyone to cuckold her, she thought, which was about the only good thing you could say about her sex life. It wasn’t just financially that the Company was having to evolve. Brynden and Sansa had met this morning to address the simple fact that their security team was simply too big to be run out of vacant row houses now. Especially not with the Program beginning to gather steam.

“How did your meeting with Lannisport go?” Robb asked.

“They’ll take our package, paying us 30.”

“That’s generous.”

“It’s three times the purity of the stepped on junk the Hightowers gave them. Everybody comes out ahead,” said Bran.

“Except the Hightowers.”

“Lannisport came to us, not the other way around,” said Sansa.

“Somehow I doubt Otto will see it that way.”

“Well, hopefully we’ll be able to make him see reason.”

“That’s optimistic.”

“Money can be a powerful motivator, we’ll offer him a favourable rate on our connect.”

“And if he doesn’t?” Arya asked.

“Then we’ll have to reason with him,” Sansa said. Arya smirked.

“I’m still not sure I like the exposure we’re opening ourselves up for,” said Robb.

“And I told you, we’re not going to be involving ourselves in street distribution. Just one of a hundred trucks that drive across the country every day. It’ll be the same in Duskendale.”

“And Gulltown?”

“I’m heading up there next week. We’ll set it up. Besides you don’t need to worry, if they catch me I promise to stand tall.”

“I’m your brother, it’s my job to worry. And what the hell makes you think that my biggest concern is you snitching.”

“They’re called jokes Robb, people use them to elicit laughter and amusement in others.”

“Let’s get inside before dessert gets served.”

***

A week later, Sansa, Brynden and Dacey Mormont were standing on a rugby field in Gulltown, trying not to freeze to death from the chill wind coming down off the Mountains of the Moon.

“We should’ve waited in the car,” said Brynden.

“Shut up.”

“Is it genetic?” Dacey asked.

“What?”

“The lame comebacks. You’re all equally terrible at them.”

“Shut up.” It was only because she was cold.

They were waiting for the leaders of the three largest gangs in Gulltown, really the only three gangs, reflecting “a natural tendency towards larger and larger groupings of capital in an unregulated market”, as the economics textbook she’d been reading would have described it. All had been former Arryn soldiers who’d branched out on their own after Jon Arryn died.

Lysa Arryn had demanded their deaths and a few young bucks had even taken a shot at collecting the bounty, but all three were still standing where those young guns and a half dozen of their fellows were not and Brynden Tully’s word had brought them to the freezing rugby field.

They arrived separately, two sedans and a range rover, all black. The three men, Albar Royce, Morton Waynwood and Lucas Corbray – whose older brother Lyn was now in prison for child abuse – soon came over to join the pair.

“Gentlemen.”

“Ma’am”

“Listen boys,” said Brynden. “You all came here to listen to this girl, so hear her out, then say your piece.”

“Gentlemen,” began Sansa. “I am here to offer you a good thing. The Company has access to as much pure cocaine and heroin as we can buy. Three times the purity of the scraps you’ve been getting from the Hightower boys. I am prepared to wholesale to your door for 30k. In exchange, I only ask two things of you. First, the most important thing in business is integrity; don’t screw us over, ever. Second, we deal with you or your seconds, no one else. No one else knows our names, no one else contacts us. And in return we all get to make more money.” These were the same rules as the Pentoshi had told her and she thought them good, but she decided to add one more. “No fighting between each other. The last thing any of us want is the eyes of the world laid on us.”

Albar Royce was the first to speak. “I’m never opposed to more money, and the Father knows that an end to the fighting will save us a world of trouble.” The other two nodded. “But how are you going to do it?”

“We’ll bring it up via truck along the High Road or the Coastal Highway. Ship it to a warehouse and then distribute it to you. Orders will run through my girl Dacey.”

Again, Albar spoke first, “Well, I’m in.” The other two nodded.

***

Across the city of King’s Landing and indeed across the whole of Westeros, life went on as it had before. Addicts worked and slaved and hustled to pay for a fix. The dealers sold their product with varying degrees of contempt for their customers. The money flowed back to count rooms and from there though a long chain of laundering to foreign bank accounts and the pockets of developers and bureaucrats, journalists and politicians. The Stark family ate the Winter Solstice meal on fine china plates and crystal glasses, while Podrick tailed a mid-level drug dealer through the Western district. Harrion Karstark and Wendel Manderlay heaved the body of a Hightower soldier into the plastic lined trunk of their car and drove out of the alley to a small warehouse to dispose of the body. Waymar Royce and five other Justice Committee staffers pored over reams of campaign finance and Treasury reports, looking for the connections that could benefit their bosses. In the alleys drunkards and junkies stumbled to vacants and cardboard boxes to sleep the night away, while politicians and drug dealers climbed stairs to do much the same in their bedrooms. For tomorrow, the game would go on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I kinda wish I could play "Fast Train" by Solomon Burke or "Step by Step" by Jesse Winchester over the last part.
> 
> On maths – King's Landing has a population of 8 million, like New York, which has a combined heroin and cocaine drug addiction rate of 3%, 2 vials per day and 20 dragons per vial, that's 9.6 million dragons turnover per day or 3.5 billion per year and the profit margin on drugs is something like 50%. It's enough to make anyone consider they may have chosen the wrong line of work doing, well, anything else, and it's no surprise so many get into drug dealing.
> 
> So that's the end of this part of the story. Obviously the drug dealing murderers have escaped justice and are much more powerful than they were at the beginning, though the Hightowers and the Justice Committee might pose a threat to that power. And of course, Barristan is still around and as he said, criminals always give the police a second chance.
> 
> Depending on how I feel, I might write about the Justice Committee's investigation. For now, thank you to all my readers, kudosers (if that's a word) and reviewers.


End file.
